by Allen Steele
Yeah, I’m sure I am, Macy thought as she stepped out onto the balcony and slung one leg over the iron railing, preparing to make the twelve-foot jump to the terrace below. Just be stupid for a few more seconds, pal.…
Then the rational part of her mind brought the situation into perspective. If she simply jumped from the balcony, she could break a leg, even in the colony’s lighter-than-normal gravity. She would be crippled, lying on the tiles, screaming and helpless, when the Salvatore torpedo—conveniently dressed as a cop—arrived down below to rescue her.
The banging at the door was becoming more insistent.
No other choice. Macy pulled the bag’s strap over her shoulder. As she brought her other leg over the railing, hanging onto the iron fence with both hands and standing on her toes on the narrow edge of the balcony, she heard a voice below her call out, “Hey, lady, I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“Shut up!” she yelled.
The doorknob rattled, then there was the heavy impact of the killer throwing his shoulder against the door.
Macy took a deep breath, then stepped back while clinging to the rail with her hands. Several voices shouted below her. The sweat in her palms caused her hands to slide down the rail posts. Her biceps screamed pain. Then, in a moment in which her heart seemed to cease beating and time itself seemed to stop, her hands involuntarily let go of the railing and she fell.…
Simon McCoy paused while we watched a cargo ship launch from Merritt Island.
From down the coast, across the rippling blue water, we could hear dimly the warning Klaxons from the distant pad. A few minutes later there was a brilliant flash of light and a sudden blossoming of dark smoke. A tiny white cylinder—either a Hughes Jarvis HLV or a Boeing Big Dummy, it was hard to tell them apart from the distance—silently rose from the smoke, riding atop an orange-white lance of fire. As it sprinted upwards into the warm afternoon sky, the crackling roar of the liftoff finally reached us.
The wharf seemed to shudder as the immense noise rippled across the channel. All at once, we heard the false thunderclap of the sonic boom, from many miles above, as the cargo ship’s velocity surpassed Mach One. Within a couple of minutes, the spacecraft had disappeared, leaving behind a slender, slowly dissipating column of smoke which stretched into the stratosphere like a vaporous stalagmite.
I sighed and looked down from the sky, to see that McCoy had been watching me, a smile on his face. “Good launch,” I murmured.
“How many have you seen?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Oh, I lost count a long time ago. But it’s never become routine, at least not for me.” I thought about it for a moment, probably because I hadn’t considered my emotions for some time. “You have to have been a space buff for as long as I have, to know what it’s like. I was born with the space age, in 1958, but I remember when we practically didn’t have a space program. The bad old days of the twentieth century.”
He nodded his head, looking out at the distant launch pads. “Where that freighter lifted off … That’s the complex where the Icarus rockets were launched, isn’t it? That must have been something to see.”
“Yeah, it was,” I replied. Then I thought about what he had just said. “Why, didn’t you see it?” I asked as casually as possible.
“No, I missed it.” Then he caught himself. “I was out of the country at the time,” he added swiftly.
Not swiftly enough, though. He might have been out of the country when the Icarus missions were launched from the Cape, but that was hardly a likely excuse. It was like saying, “No, I slept through 2047, so I didn’t notice the most important thing that happened that year.”
The Icarus project was something which everyone in the world had witnessed, for it was the closest human civilization had come to terminal global catastrophe of natural causes. It had taken four unmanned spacecraft, each armed with a 100-megaton nuke, to deflect the Apollo asteroid Icarus from its collision course with Earth. The week the nukes intercepted Icarus, one at a time in staggered volleys between 10 and 20 million miles from Earth, the whole world had been watching, quite literally. Live TV transmissions, from a satellite deployed in high orbit to monitor the mission, had been seen in every country. There had also been such sideshows as mass evacuations from coastal areas, riots in major cities, doomsday proclamations by at least a dozen religious cults, and a few dozen suicides, some of them in public. In the year 2047 the human race blew a fuse; it had felt a lot like 1968.
There was a universal sigh of relief when the news came that a flying mountain was no longer about to make the human race one with the dinosaurs, the last residents of Earth to have been clobbered by an asteroid. Simon McCoy must have been in one hell of a remote locale to have missed that scene. Even aborigines in Terra del Fuego had watched the launch of the Icarus rockets on their pocket TVs.
“The bad old days of the twentieth century,” McCoy repeated, a not very subtle way of changing the subject. “I take it that you’re talking about the era when space exploration was exclusively a government undertaking?”
“That’s right.” If McCoy was trying to distract me, he could had done worse than to pick one of my favorite topics. “A political football is more like it, though. At least, that’s the way it was in the U.S. There were senators like Proxmire and Mondale who tried to kill the program to make themselves look more populist, and Presidents like Nixon and Reagan who supported it only when it was convenient for their political agendas and dropped the ball when things like the Challenger disaster occurred. The best thing to happen was when NASA was deinstitutionalized and space development was handed over to private industry.”
“I see,” McCoy said. “So I guess you don’t have anything against the major space corporations.”
“Not on principle, no. Skycorp, Uchu-Hiko, TexSpace, and the rest showed that you can operate a space fleet without a federal-size budget, not as long as you applied basic business sense. Controlling overhead costs was something that NASA never really learned. As small as its budget was back then, and as much as it fought for every dime, NASA still spent money like a drunken sailor. Lots of gold-plating just to inflate costs, when the idea should be the other way around. But if the companies go into the red, there’s no sugar-daddy Congress to bail them out in the next fiscal year.”
McCoy stood up to stretch his legs. He absently walked to one of the old telescopes, pressed a quarter into the slot and peered through the eyepiece. “I see. So you believe private industry saved space exploration.”
“To a certain extent, yes, I do,” I said defensively. “Call me a filthy capitalist pig, if you want, but at least we don’t have to depend exclusively on NASA anymore.”
“But privatization is not without its drawbacks,” he said. The telescope ticked softly.
I nodded, squinting a little as the sun glared off the surf. As I answered I fumbled in my shirt pocket for my antique aviator-style sunglasses. One of the more pleasant relics of the last century, and rare as dinosaur bones. Sometimes I lie awake at night, wondering what would become of me were I to break the last pair of aviator specs on Earth.
“No, of course not,” I replied. “There’s little basic research for its own sake being done by the companies. With the emphasis being on near-Earth commercial space projects, exploration is beginning to suffer. Except for stuff like the Jovian system probes and some more American-Soviet work on Mars, we’re beginning to stagnate. The Daedalus probe was the last major new-start program, and we probably won’t see a follow-up because no one wants to spend money on something which won’t produce results for another generation. So that’s the problem with market-driven space exploration, at least as I see it.”
“Too many fishermen and not enough Columbuses.” McCoy pursed his lips thoughtfully as he swiveled the telescope to look at the Merritt Island pads. “Interesting perspective. What do the companies have to say about that?”
“Nothing to me,” I replied. “I wrote an essay on the subject for Harper
’s and lost some of my best contacts for my trouble. Skycorp especially is notorious for cutting off its relationships with writers who give ’em too much flak, so …” I stopped. “So what’s it to you, anyway? You’re the one who’s supposed to be telling me a story.”
McCoy continued to study the coastline through the telescope. “Idle interest. I’ve always wondered why you’ve never gone to Clarke County. Certainly you’ve been offered the chance.”
I drained the last of my beer and thought about getting the robot to fetch me another one. “Sure. I was on the list for a press junket right after the colony was opened, but I passed it up. I don’t think reporters should take junkets. And once you’ve seen one tourist trap, you’ve seen ’em all.”
McCoy laughed. The telescope’s timer ran out and the shutter closed with an audible clunk. “I’ve never heard Clarke County described as a tourist trap before,” he said as he looked up from the eyepiece. “Damn. Doesn’t give you much time, does it?”
“That’s about all Clarke County ever has been.” The beer was hitting me hard, but I didn’t care. I was warming to the subject. “That’s what makes me furious about the colony. It started off as an ambitious idea, but Skycorp and TexSpace realized the tourist potential of the place, and before we knew it, we got Disneyland in space. Everything else takes a back seat. That’s what I mean about market-driven stagnation.”
McCoy shrugged again. “But tourism was one of the prime movers for space exploration,” he pressed, playing the devil’s advocate. “That’s where much of the money came from, since your ‘sugar-daddy Congress’ left the picture.”
I waved my hand impatiently. “Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard all that before. My point is that space is still a frontier. Living out there isn’t as hard as it was thirty years ago, but it’s still no place for sightseers. The job demands settlers.”
I paused to think about what we had been discussing. “If it hadn’t been for the tourist trade,” I added, “this whole Church of Elvis business wouldn’t have happened.”
McCoy seemed to ponder that for a few moments. “Perhaps. But the fifth Icarus nuke was still up there. Since Macy Westmoreland would have found the launch codes anyway, I don’t think …”
“She never had the codes,” I interrupted. “That was something that came out of the Church of Elvis.”
Smiling vaguely, McCoy turned away from the telescope and resumed his seat on the bench. “No, not quite. Let’s pick up the story again, shall we …?”
9
A Free Country
(Saturday: 4:21 P.M.)
Ralph Gentry wrapped the suit’s right-hand claw manipulator around a spar and moved his left leg to brace the heavy boot against a crosspiece. Raising the blunt tube of the welding torch at the end of his right arm, he adjusted the electronic cross hairs superimposed on his main screen until they were centered on the juncture where the two aluminum rebars touched. He moved his head and squinted through the eyepiece of the periscope to visually double-check his work, then he squeezed his right hand around the trigger of the torch.
The free-electron laser beam, normally invisible, showed up in the infrared field of vision of the suit’s tiny monitor screen as a thin red line, and the aluminum silently bubbled and spat tiny globules as the rebars were slowly welded together. Once the weld was complete, Gentry tested it with a tug of his claw-manipulator. Satisfied that the weld was solid, he glanced up at the computer-generated position screen, just above his head within the tiny cockpit of the suit. The beam-builder spiders had continued to lay down a gridwork of slender beams to his left, stretching away in the distance, curving around behind him to form the skeleton of Torus 19.
A voice came through his headset. Candy Apple-two-one, do you copy? Over.
“Open comlink,” Gentry told his suit. “Central, this is Candy Apple-two-one, we copy. What’s up?”
Gene King, the shift foreman, came on the line from the construction shack. Gentry, what are you up to over there? Over.
“Welding work on Nancy-one-nine, section two-one,” Gentry replied. “It’s coming along nicely.”
Can you put it on hold? Ned Ruiz developed a slow leak in his LOX tank and had to go in for a fix. Gold Team’s short one person putting the external shields near you on Nancy-one-niner and they need a hand. That’s bearing X-Ray two-zero, Yankee minus ten, Zulu three-six, on section zero-two. Nebraska Tango one-seven is the person you need to see. Over.
“Okey-doke, Gene. On my way. Candy Apple-one-two out.”
Gentry began to walk across the torus’s outer framework. The massive exoskeleton he wore—or, more accurately, piloted—amplified the movements of his arms and legs, transforming him into a juggernaut. Watch out, here comes Conan the Beamjack. He needed that extra strength; since the incomplete torus rotated along with the rest of the colony, he was subject to one g gravity.
He lumbered down the giant torus—passing other armored beamjacks at work on the skeleton, glimpsing construction pods transporting material from one side of the torus to another, spotting through the gridwork the floating hulk of a mass-driver barge which had hauled aluminum cassettes up from Descartes Station on the Moon.
He found Gold Team, struggling to get the outer shields attached to the outer hull of that section of Torus N-19. The shields were huge rectangular slabs of crushed, compacted moonrock. It took two beamjacks in construction armor to successfully maneuver the shields into position on the supporting gridwork. It was hard, painstaking labor, but not so difficult that they couldn’t swap gossip while they worked.
Hey, did you see that thing that was on the bulletin board today? Luke Garcia—also known as Nebraska Tango one-seven—asked. He was holding onto the opposite end of a slab as they gently lowered it into a cavity. Below them, another Gold Team beamjack, Alicia Shay, was hanging by her claw manipulator to the underside of the skeleton, waiting to weld the shield’s pins to the support struts.
“Naw, what thing?” Gentry asked.
Take it about three degrees to the left, guys, Ali interrupted, watching her suit’s heads-up display. Okay, okay … there we go. You mean that note we got in the mail? Total bullshit.
So who asked you anyway? Luke responded. Okay, that got it?
Got it, just hold it right there. Ali’s laser torch came up, and on their screens they could see the pencil-thin flash of the laser beam. Gee, Luke, I thought that was an open question.…
Well, it wasn’t. I was talking to Ralphie here.…
Excuse me for expressing an opinion, then, Ali retorted. I thought this was a free country. Ah, those turkeys, they’re always putting those pins off a few inches. Can you …? Naw, wait, I can still reach ’em.…
Well, that’s the point, isn’t it? Luke went on. I mean, it’s a free country down there, but up here we’ve got our asses in hock to the companies. I don’t think …
That’s your whole problem, Luke, Ali shot back. You don’t think. Face it, pal, you’ve got a cozy gig. You’re making enough dough from your contract to start that restaurant you’ve always talked about, and you don’t have to worry about falling off no goddamn skyscraper to get it. So don’t bite the hand that feeds you, dig?
Well, what if I want to stay here and open that restaurant on the Strip? Luke said. I don’t want to have to give everything I make to the companies, or have them tell me what or where or why.…
“I think …” Gentry started to say.
What makes you think it’s any different now? Ali cut in, brushing him aside. Skycorp and Uchu-Hiko built the place, TexSpace runs the tourist business, Trump bought the hotel and the Strip … geez, Luke, what makes you think this is a free country, anyway?
Because you said it was a free country, that’s why! Garcia laughed. Didja hear that, Ralph? I got her!
I just don’t think a revolution is going to solve anything, Ali sulked.
I dunno. Can’t hurt, can it?
Famous last words. Shay’s laser winked out. All right, that’s got it. Let�
��s get the next section done.
Gentry, listening to the exchange over his comlink, was quietly thinking it over. The idea of public insurrection didn’t make him very comfortable, though. Even if he himself was making barely enough money to get by—his personal debts were massive, and life in Clarke County was hardly cheap—the thought of mobs marching on town hall with torches in hand was unsettling. Just let me get through the day, he thought as he followed the other armored beamjacks to the next section. All I want is a cold beer and a hot meal and someplace to sleep at night.
Yet, deep down inside, it was an exhilarating thought: to push the Corporation’s back to the wall, to tell them that he was goddamn sick and tired of giving all his money back to them, leaving him with just enough for the necessities of life. They paid the people who worked for them nickels and dimes, then wanted it all back for rent and groceries. They just gave me a two-buck raise, he thought. Next week, they’ll probably increase my rent.
Maybe there was something to this revolution business.…
Cougar Joe got off the Red Line tram at Torus S-12 and walked down to his bofaellesskaber, the Danish-style co-housing complex he shared with three other New Ark families. It had been a long day on the farm for him. Weeds had managed to get their ugly little roots into some of the hydroponics tanks in S-16, meaning that Joe and two other Ark farmers had spent the better part of the day with their arms in the tanks, trying to locate and dig out the weeds before they overwhelmed the beansprouts. It had been hard, messy work, and Cougar Joe was hoping that someone else among his neighbors was in the mood for a beer.
Not entirely to his surprise, a couple of other Ark farmers were gathered around a tree-shaded picnic table in the courtyard of the bofaellesskaber. Since their bamboo townhouses were built around the courtyard of the pocket-size neighborhood, the picnic table was a natural meeting place for the adults while their kids futzed around on the playground slides and monkey bars. It was Kenny Bartel’s turn to bring the six-pack to the table; he and Tess Greene were already working through their first beers when Cougar Joe sat down at the table.