Orbital Decay

by Allen Steele

  “Go swim for it,” he whispered.

  “What’d you say?” Dave asked.

  Hooker settled back into the chair, letting out a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding. “Never mind. Nothing.”

  “Nice view there for a little while, huh? How’d you like that boat?”

  “Uh-huh. Nice boat.” Hooker unfastened the seat belt, let himself float out of his chair. The third shift would be starting soon; he had to get to the airlock to catch the ferry over to Vulcan Station. Besides, John was giving him a dirty look, as if to say that he had worn out his welcome in the dome.

  Dave laid a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, pal, you okay?”

  Hooker felt depressed as hell. “Yeah, sure. I’m fine. Thanks for letting me take a look through the scope again.”

  “Sure, Popeye.” The NSA meteorologist smiled. “Anything to help out a homesick swabbie.”

  2

  Ear Test

  AFTER DAVE HAD CLOSED and locked the hatch behind the departing Popeye Hooker, he was chided by Bob and John for allowing the beamjack inside. After all, they were expecting a classified transmission from the NSA’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, material rated “Top Secret-Eyes Only” of which only a few people in the federal government were even aware. If Popeye had overheard the transmission, he could have spread word around Olympus Station that something called Big Ear was being tested.

  “So big deal,” Dave said, pulling himself hand over hand back to his chair. “Everyone knows about the Ear. You can pick up a newspaper down there and read all about it.”

  “You know what I mean,” Bob replied, glaring at him from his seat beside the communications console. “It isn’t just the Ear.”

  “Yeah, uh-huh. I know what you mean. But, y’know, if we were to let the cat out of the bag…”

  “Five years in Leavenworth, like that.” Bob snapped his fingers. “Unauthorized disclosure of security-sensitive information. Don’t even think about it, Jarrett.”

  “No, I mean if someone were to release that, uh, info… y’know, if that happened, and someone were to take a poll and ask everyone how they felt about it, I’d bet that most people would say this was the right thing to do.”

  John blew out his cheeks derisively. “Yeah, I bet. You know what kind of shit would hit the fan if this got out? What Congress would say? The ACLU? The UN? Come back to reality, pal….”

  “Besides, if it got out, it’d just render the system useless,” Bob added, nodding his head. “Something like this has to be kept secret for it to work.”

  He paused, staring up at a CRT screen over his head displaying a graphic representation of low-orbital space above Earth. “Okay, birds One and Two are coming into position. We should be hearing from Meade any minute now.” He pulled his headset up from around his neck and fitted it over his cranium, pulling the microphone into place in front of his mouth.

  “Anyway, so I feel sorry for the guy,” Dave continued, gently lowering himself into his own chair and strapping his torso into place. “I think he’s really getting nutty for going back home.”

  “So who isn’t?” John said. He adjusted his own headset and touched glowing buttons on his console, which changed its liquid crystal display. “Man, I’ve been up here nine months now and my wife and kids still think I’m in Ecuador.”

  Dave said nothing. He gazed through the big port in front of him at Earth spiraling below them. He spotted a wink of reflected light moving across the planet, just above the Caribbean. That would be the Freedom space station, orbiting three hundred miles above the equator.

  “Hey, when are they going to switch command and control over to Freedom?” he asked.

  “When all the tests are done,” John replied, working at his console. His fingers wandered across the pressure-sensitive LCD keyboard. “I think they’re talking three or four months from now, whenever Skycorp gets done building the module.”

  Bob looked at them both sourly. “That’s classified, Knox,” he said to “John.” “I don’t want to hear either one of you chitchatting about it, understand?”

  Dave turned away to keep Bob from seeing the expression on his face. Christ, working with Piers Pauley—whom everyone aboard Skycan knew as Bob—was a major pain in the butt. The man was career NSA through and through; the Agency was his first priority at all times. Dave suspected that Pauley had taken this post as a steppingstone to advancement in the Agency, that he had ambitions of becoming a senior administrator in NSA’s space-based intelligence operations. Dave himself only wanted to stay on as long as it took to amass enough savings in the bank; then he would retire from the Agency and move back to his native New Hampshire, perhaps open up a restaurant in North Conway. The hell with cloak-and-dagger, and the hell especially with the Big Ear.

  “Incoming transmission from Meade,” Bob said. He touched buttons on his console. “You’re patched in, Knox. Scrambler working.”

  “Big Dog, this is Olympus Weatherman,” John intoned. “We’re green for Ear Test. Do you copy?”

  Roger, we copy, Weatherman, an equally monotone voice said in their earphones. The Ear is in place. Send activation code and stand by for program transmission.

  John picked up an envelope that had been magnetically tacked to his console and tore it open, drawing out a red slip of paper. “Bob, the activation code is one, seven, seven, nine, foxtrot gamma tango,” he read from the paper. Bob entered the code on his communications console keyboard.

  An instant later: Roger, Weatherman, code received and authenticated. Now transmitting program.

  All three men moved their fingers over their terminals’ keyboards, touching controls which cleared their systems. The LCD’s, which had displayed meteorological commands, went dark, leaving empty black glass surfaces. A few moments later a completely different set of command keys, controlling the new program just transmitted from Virginia, appeared on the consoles.

  “Big Dog, we’ve received program,” Bob said. “Awaiting commencement of test.”

  We copy, Weatherman. Test begins in thirty seconds.

  Dave touched silver keys on his console, watched them turn gold. “Recorder activated,” he said. “Source locator on standby.”

  “Locator slaved to Big Dog feed,” John said.

  “Signal locked with Meade and Big Ear,” Bob said. “Comlink status green.”

  “Big Dog, Weatherman is green,” John said.

  Roger, Weatherman. Test begins now.

  Instantly, small green lamps appeared on each display, lighting the words SYSTEM TEST. Dave glanced at the cassette loaded in the recorder by his elbow, affirmed that the machine was working, the reels moving. Okay, now to see how long it would take for the Ear to hear something.

  At that second, a digital numeral 2 appeared on their displays. “Holy Mother,” he murmured to himself, “that was quick.”

  “Big Dog, this is Weatherman,” Bob said. “We have two possibles, over.”

  We copy, Weatherman. Please monitor.

  John touched buttons on his console and immediately all three men heard new voices in their earphones—a conversation between two men, as clear as if they had picked up an extension phone in one of their houses:

  … I’m telling you, he’s no damn good. We should have never elected him, never believed a word he said. It was all campaign bullshit, all the time. Now the bastard’s sending troops to Central America and you can bet Stevie’s one of them.

  Yeah, A-right. I told Stevie she shoulda split to Canada….

  Canada’s just catching ’em and shippin’ ’em back to the States. Doesn’t do any damn good to run from the draft now. I’m telling ya, Jeff, the only way to stop that crazy fucker is to kill him before he gets us further into this mess….

  A thread of print appeared on their screens: SAN DIEGO, CA. MAX A. HILLMAN 2206 OCEANSIDE 6198750646; SAN DIEGO, CA. ROBERT P. ROSE 1117 PALMETTO 6190324201.

  “Big Dog, Weatherman,” Bob said into his mike. “Intercepted tel
ephone conversation in San Diego. Possible discussion of Presidential assassination. Location and identities verified.” He glanced over his shoulder at Dave; Dave nodded back. “Conversation recorded.”

  Roger, Weatherman. Data received. Monitor second possible, please.

  John cut off the first conversation, touched buttons that brought the second phone call Big Ear had netted into their earphones.

  A child’s squeaky voice; it could have belonged to either a boy or a girl, no more than six or seven years old: So my daddy says there could be a nukey bom’ put in, put in a big city, y’know, an’ if someone wanted to call the Pres’dent and say you gimme a hunnert zillion dollars or I’ll blow it up and kill everybody and the Pres’dent would have to say okay ’cause if he din’t all those people would get kilt and he wouldn’t get re’lected….

  Another child’s voice: Yeah, yeah! But y’know, y’know, y’know whatta work better, huh?

  If, if, if…if you gotta nuk’la bomb and we put it in the basement of the school, huh? An’ we called Miz McDaniels an’ said, you better stop Jeff and Mike and the other third grade guys from beating us up an’ we getta watch TV during arithmetic, or we…

  The three men began to howl. When Bob switched the comlink back to the Fort Meade channel they could hear the reciprocal laughter from the men in Maryland. “Big Dog, that call originated in Jackson, Tennessee. Do you want a fix?”

  Ah, that’s a negatory, Weatherman. I don’t think we have a threat to national security there.

  “We copy, Big Dog.” Bob paused, studying his display. Dave checked his own screen and saw that three more possibles were being registered by the system. “The Ear’s picked up three more bogies,” John said. “Do you want us to monitor?”

  Negative, Weatherman, we can analyze them here. Big Dog calls his chowtime good eating and our compliments to the chef. Ah, Surfer Joe is ready to hang three in a few weeks. “Surfer Joe” was the code name for the Vandenberg AFB launch site, the point from the which the next cluster of SIGINT satellites would be boosted into polar orbit. Erase data and terminate link. See you, Big Dog out.

  “Weatherman out, Big Dog,” Bob said.

  “Woof woof,” John murmured, and typed a sequence of commands which both erased the key display and wiped the onetime program from the computer.

  As Dave shut down his keyboard and wiped the program Fort Meade had sent up, he glanced at the recorder he had just shut off. On that tape were two conversations: one between a pair of irate but not necessarily harmful Californians, the other between two kids somewhere in Tennessee. Private phone calls, which the NSA had monitored, recorded, and determined their points of origin. The guys in San Diego—especially Robert P. Rose, who had offhandedly mentioned shooting the President—were about to come under investigation by the Agency….

  For saying things they thought had been said in the privacy of their homes. Dave frowned as he worked. And I thought sedition laws had been found to be unconstitutional….

  Big Ear. When the system was complete and fully operational, being able to locate and intercept phone calls that seemed to threaten national security would be just a drop in the bucket.

  Suddenly, Dave found himself getting worried: What in the hell am I helping to create?

  3

  The Wheel

  I DON’T KNOW WHY We didn’t call Olympus Station “the Wheel.” In one of those grand, corny old science fiction movies of the 1950s, The Conquest of Space, there was a torus-shaped space station, and its crew called it the Wheel, but that’s not what we called ours.

  Maybe it was because the crew in that movie and the crew of Skycorp One had fundamental differences in attitude. Cap’n Wallace got a videotape of The Conquest of Space shipped up to us once, to show in the rec room on Saturday night. We all got a big laugh out of it, which annoyed Henry George Wallace because he took it seriously. There was no way we could. Spit-and-polish Air Force officer types going around saluting and eating food capsules—that wasn’t us by a long shot, with the possible exception of the NSA spooks in Meteorology. It embarrassed Wallace because that was his fantasy of how we were supposed to be, and that episode made him all the more reclusive—but I’ll get to that later.

  We called our wheel in space “Skycan,” which aptly summed up the living conditions. The Federation starship Enterprise it wasn’t. In fact, I can’t imagine a more boring place to live, except maybe for the Moon.

  Does it come as a surprise that living in space is boring? That the image of happy, enthusiastic spacemen giving their all for the future of stellar conquest is an idealistic myth? I think a few of the crewmen who flipped out and had to be sent back home did so because of the shock that space life is not the picnic it’s cut out to be. The guys who stayed, and kept their act straight, did so because they found ways of coping with Skycan. Wallace had his fantasy world, of the intrepid commander leading his men boldly forth where no man has gone before. I had my SF to read and write, a similar escape, if not quite as obnoxious. Other people came up with other ways, and I’ll get around to telling you about that. But let’s start with good ol’ Skycan.

  As the name implies, it was cramped. A new extreme in coziness, you might say. Each bunkhouse module was about twenty-four feet long by six feet wide, with eight bunks per module, four on each side. The bunks had accordion screens across the open sides; each bunk had its own locker, intercom, viewscreen, and computer terminal. And, except for the modules occupied by Doc Felapolous, Wallace, and Hank Luton, the construction foreman, that was the maximum amount of privacy one could get in the station. Not even the showers and johns were that private.

  Speaking of the showers: Because we had to be water-conservative, we often went days—and sometimes weeks—without bathing. You got used to it. After a while.

  From the outside, Skycan looked like a huge stylized top hanging in geosynchronous orbit. As one got closer, as during an approach from Earth or from one of the other stations, smaller spacecraft could be seen continuously moving around it: orbital-transfer vehicles up from low Earth orbit, ferries transporting men to and from Vulcan Station, on occasion a Big Dummy or a Jarvis bringing up supplies from the Cape.

  The station consisted of forty-two modules linked together by interlocking connectors and rail-like rims running above and below the modules. On the inside of the wheel was an inner torus, an inflated passageway which connected the modules, called the “catwalk.” At the center of the wheel was the hub, a converted external tank from a Columbia-class shuttle that had been brought into high orbit by OTV tugs and transformed into the station’s operation center. It was connected to the rim modules by two spokes, which ended at terminus modules at opposite ends of the rim.

  All the modules were the same size, and had been brought up, three at a time, by Big Dummy HLV cargo ships. The modules, built at Skycorp’s Cocoa Beach facility, each had certain specialized functions. Besides the sixteen bunkhouses, there were four modules for the wardroom, or mess decks; two for Data Processing, where the computers were maintained; two for Sickbay/Bio Research; two for the rec room; five for Hydroponics, where the algae and vegetables were grown; three for Life Support, where water and air quality and circulation was controlled; two each at opposite ends of the station for Reclamation, which purified and recycled the water and solid wastes from the bunk-houses; one for the Lunar Resources lab; one for the Astrophysics lab; and two for Skycorp’s offices, which doubled as comparatively spacious living quarters for Wallace and Luton.

  The hub was about one hundred and fifty-five feet long and twenty-eight feet wide. Through the center ran a central shaft that connected the levels; the spokes ran into it at the center of the hub. At the bottom was Meteorology; above that was Power Control, which housed the RTG nuclear cells that powered the station. Above the spoke intercepts was the Command deck, the largest compartment on Skycan except for Power Control, containing the work stations for the crewmen operating Traffic Control, Communications, and other functions. Above
Command was Astronaut Prep—better known as the “whiteroom” from the old NASA days—where crewmen went to prepare for EVA or for boarding spacecraft. The last level was the Multiple Target Docking Adapter, better known as the airlock or the Docks, where up to five spacecraft could dock with Skycan.

  Olympus spun, clockwise in reference to Earth, at 2.8 rpm, which produced at the rim an artificial gravity of one-third Earth normal. There was only microgravity, or zero gee, at the hub. When a ship prepared to link with the Docks, operators at Traffic Control activated motors that turned the module counterclockwise at 2.8 rpm. This produced the illusion that the MTDA was standing still while the rest of Skycan continued to turn, making it possible for the craft to connect without wrecking itself or the Docks.

  Living up there produced a funny kind of orientation. At the rim, in one of the modules, “up” was in the direction of the spokes and the hub. At the hub, “down” was the modules. We had also divided the station’s rim into two hemispheres, for purposes of designation in an environment where, when one walked down the catwalk, one eventually came back to the place from which he or she had started. So Modules 1 through 21 were in the “eastern” hemisphere, with the spoke leading from that half of the station being the east spoke. Modules 22 through 42 were in the “western” hemisphere, with the spoke in that half of the station being the west spoke.

  The modules were designated by numbers, but for easy identification along the catwalk small colored panels had been affixed to the walls beside the access hatches in the floor. The modules were thus color-coded: The bunkhouses were dark blue, Hydroponics was brown, the Wardroom was yellow, Life Support and Data Processing were both gray, Sickbay was white, the rec modules were green, Reclamation was amber, the terminus modules were light blue, and the science modules were scarlet. Fortunately we didn’t have problems with colorblind personnel, since Skycorp weeded those people out in its selection process.