Orbital Decay

by Allen Steele

  The color-coding of the modules was the only bit of color one could find on Skycan. Everything was painted a flat, utilitarian gray. It added a great deal to the monotony. There were no windows except in the hub; TV screens near the ceilings next to CRT displays gave the only views of what was going on outside. Most of the furniture was bolted to the floor, and little of it seemed to have been designed with the human body in mind. Pipes and conduits ran across the ceilings and most of the walls. The lighting was white and harsh, from fluorescent tubes in the ceilings. Since the hatches were heavy and hard to shut, they were left open most of the time, except in Hydroponics and Data Processing, where certain temperatures had to be maintained, and in Reclamation, which reeked like an outhouse.

  Muzak played constantly from the speakers in the modules and in the catwalk and in the spokes—Henry’s idea of improving morale, which did exactly the opposite. Sometimes you found a couple of guys on the catwalk throwing Frisbees, making them bounce off the floor and the curving Mylar walls. In the rec room you could work out on the gym equipment or stare at the wide-screen TV or play video games, but that was about it.

  We had books and magazines, but we had read them all because there were not very many. There were members of the opposite sex aboard, but in such cramped quarters there was hardly any chance to get laid with any privacy. While getting it on in a bunk with the curtains closed, one might expect to hear people outside, murmuring, laughing, making obscene noises.

  We had video cassettes sent up to us, to show on the rec deck, but it was most G for General Audiences stuff—Walt Disney nature flicks, unfunny sitcoms, space adventures and so forth—that H.G. Wallace thought was best for our morale. I’ve lost count of how many times we saw the Star Wars movies, Goldie Hawn flicks, The Pat Robertson Story and The L-5 Family: Part III.

  No vacations for the guys on one-year tours of duty. One vacation to Earth for the guys on two-year contracts. It cost a thousand bucks per pound to get something up to the Clarke Orbit, so if it cost nearly $200,000 to send an average-sized person to Olympus Station, including the cost in job training and life support, you can bet Skycorp wouldn’t bring ’em back to Earth for a week just because he or she was getting a little bored. As stated in the fine print on the job contract, only a death in the family or a severe medical problem could get you sent temporarily back to Earth. Some of the guys with two-year contracts didn’t even bother to take their vacations; it just wasn’t worth having to go through readjusting to low-gravity life, with the usual recurrence of spacesickness that went along with it.

  So there were one hundred and thirty of us aboard that wheel in the sky: building the powersats, putting up with the boredom and cramped quarters, making money the hard way to support families or start small businesses like restaurants or game parlors when we got back home. Working, eating, sleeping, working. Getting bored.

  People started doing strange things after a while.

  4

  Virgin Bruce

  A FEW MINUTES AFTER Popeye Hooker, in an even more funky mood than before his visit to Meteorology, floated up the hub’s central shaft to the Docks, a crewman on the Command deck stared at his console’s main CRT and murmured, “What the hell?”

  His screen displayed the whereabouts of all spacecraft in a three-dimensional region of space around Olympus Station and Vulcan Station. Although the screen was two-dimensional, computer graphics depicted the spacecraft as existing in a sphere sixty miles in diameter. Each blip on the screen was designated with a different color according to its type. Small print above each blip showed the craft’s location and trajectory on the X, Y, and Z axes.

  What the space traffic controller noticed was a craft enroute from the construction shack to the main station. This was not unusual in itself; at least a dozen ships made the fifty-mile trip between Vulcan and Olympus each day. What was odd was that this craft was a construction pod, and they never—absolutely never—made trips between the two stations.

  If one of the beamjacks at the powersat needed to return to Olympus, he never rode over in one of the OTVs that served as interorbital ferries. The construction pods were difficult to pilot; most of the guys who were trained to operate them preferred not to make the delicate docking maneuver more than they had to during a work shift.

  More importantly, though, the pods’ fuel supplies were limited. Someone attempting to make a run back to Skycan in a pod ran a high risk of running out of fuel on the way over. Being set adrift was more of a nuisance than it was a danger. It just meant that someone else had to drop what he was doing to go out in another spacecraft to tow the unlucky pod back to Vulcan Station. But because this meant lost time and productivity, using construction pods for commutes between Vulcan and Olympus was strictly against regulations. With the exception of a single pod that was kept at Skycan for maintenance jobs around the station, most of the pods remained in the vicinity of Vulcan Station and SPS-1.

  Yet, there one was. The white blip on the controller’s screen was a Vulcan construction pod, and its coordinates and bearing showed it to be heading for Skycan.

  The controller raised his headset mike to lip level and touched a button on his intercom. “Communications? Joni? This is Rick at TC.”

  Communications was located a half-level below Traffic Control. If the controller glanced over his shoulder and down, he could have looked through the open-grid metal flooring and seen the radio deck, about fifteen feet away. More than once, he wished his station could have been closer to Joni’s station. In fact, having her sitting in his lap would have been just close enough.

  Communications. What’s up, Anderson? Joni’s throaty voice responded in his earphones. A lovely voice, Anderson reflected. The kind you could fantasize about hearing at night, in your bed. He just loved to talk to Communications when she was on duty.

  “Ah, I have a construction pod on my screen, bearing nine, three, three, on course for Olympus. Have you had any radio contact, love?”

  There was a pause. A construction pod. Traffic Control?

  Anderson wished she would be a bit less formal with him. Oh, mon chéri amour, perhaps even informal enough to take your clothes off for me? He glanced at his console again, to be sure. “That’s confirmed, ah, Communications.” But why rush things? “That’s construction pod Zulu Tango on direct course for Olympus. Have you received radio confirmation?”

  Opening comlink and signaling, Traffic Control. Stand by.

  Anderson heard the familiar whisper of the primary channel being opened and lovely Ms. Lowenstein’s voice saying, Construction pod Zulu Tango, this is Olympus Command. Do you request emergency docking instructions? Over.

  A pause. Nothing. No response from the approaching pod.

  Her voice again. Construction pod Zulu Tango, this is Olympus Command. Do you copy? Over.

  Anderson checked his screen again. The pod was still on a beeline for Skycan. From the data the computer was giving him, it was a little less than fifteen miles from Olympus and closing. He glanced up at an overhead TV monitor, but couldn’t make out the pod’s navigational lights from the stars in the background. Anderson figured the little spacecraft had to be running on its fuel reserves by now.

  Zulu Tango, this is Olympus, Joni Lowenstein said again. Do you copy? Please acknowledge contact.

  What’s going on with this asshole? Anderson wondered. Is his radio out?

  As if in reply, a new voice came over the radio link. Olympus Command, this is Zulu Tango, over.

  Zulu Tango, you’re in Olympus traffic zone. Do you wish to dock? Over.

  You’re damn straight I want to dock, Olympus. The voice had a distinguishable sneer in it. Clear Bay Three, over.

  Anderson felt his temper rise. Who did this jerk think he was, demanding docking space for a pod at Olympus? “Open the channel, Joni,” he snapped. When he heard the click of the frequency being opened to him, he said, “Pod Zulu Tango, this is Olympus Traffic. What the hell are you trying to pull?”

&nbs
p; Listen, pencil-neck Olympus Traffic, the voice snarled, don’t gimme any shit and get that bay open now!

  Anderson, gasping for breath, could have sworn he heard the communications officer stifle a laugh. Her voice then came back on the line. Zulu Tango, is this an emergency? Over.

  Lady, there’s going to be an emergency if you don’t get pencil-neck to gimme a clear place to park this bug. I’m decelerating now, and I don’t want anything between me and Bay Three ’cept ten miles of nothing, or I’m going to stomp on his head. Over.

  Anderson reeled back from his console, staring at the screen and the white blip on it, which now seemed as big as a golf ball. What manner of maniac were they dealing with here? A ferry to Vulcan about to go out, another on approach from the shack, an OTV bringing up a cargo canister from low orbit—and here was a pod with no business being there at all, demanding an airlock all to its own. H.G. Wallace was going to have a duck….

  The voice from Zulu Tango came over the link again: And while you’re at it, Olympus, get Wallace and tell him that Neiman wants words with him when I get in. Thank you, sweetheart… over and out.

  The string of insults Anderson had prepared disappeared from his mouth. Neiman. Of course, it would be Neiman. His lip curled in disgust, but he felt his hands quiver slightly, and he hurried to clear the other traffic away from Bay Three.

  He now knew what manner of maniac with whom they were dealing.

  The construction pod was a squat cylinder that looked vaguely like a bumblebee; indeed, the yellow and black stripes running horizontally along its midsection added to its metaphorical appearance. Its primary electrical supply, at the rear, came from a long bank of solar cells resembling wings. The large spherical fuel tanks near the bottom could have been pollen sacks; the polarized canopy windows on its front, multifaceted eyes; the docking adapter on its top perhaps the bee’s jaws. Most insectile were the two long, articulated arms thrusting out from either side of the cockpit, which looked like a bee’s front legs. The pod moved by means of thrusters arranged around the fuselage, and depending upon the skill of the pilot, it tended to behave like a flying insect, with sharp, apparently erratic movements.

  Classed technically as a FFWS—Free-Flier Work Station—its manufacturer had tried to peg the little space vehicle “work bees.” Yet too many of the beamjacks had seen the movie 2001 for the name to stick. As long as there were wags to mumble, upon approaching for a docking, the immortal phrase—“Open the pod bay door, Hal”—the FFWS’s would be known as pods, manufacturers’ metaphors notwithstanding.

  Pod Zulu Tango made its final approach to Olympus’ third airlock in the MTDA at the top of the station, its thrusters flashing as its pilot gently brought it in. While the station’s rim and hub continued to rotate, the pilot’s eyes and the simulation on his navigational computer both told him that the MTDA was stationary, an illusion caused by the backward rotation of the module itself.

  As it closed in on the airlock, Dave Chang, the Chinese-American who served as the whiteroom chief, glanced out a porthole, saw the pod’s hatch in the center of the docking adapter, and knew at once that they were all in big trouble.

  Chang had been given only a brief warning from Anderson down in Traffic Control that a construction pod from Vulcan was making an unexpected rendezvous at Skycan. The instructions had been few: an order from Command that, under no circumstances, would the pilot be allowed to leave the Docks before Security Officer Bigthorn and Doc Felapolous arrived. Anderson had not told Chang who exactly it was inside the pod, negligence which Chang now believed to be the result of his having fleeced Anderson at a blackjack game in their bunkhouse a couple of weeks ago.

  Anderson, obviously, was trying to set him up for a big surprise. But Chang had worked in the whiteroom at Vulcan before being sent over to Olympus, and thus knew all of the beamjacks. He was also aware that many of the workers who were assigned to fly the pods had their own preferences as to which of the machines they operated. Technically, regulations did not allow such preferences, but Luton quietly let them get away with rule-bending the way Wallace wouldn’t allow, so some of the pod pilots were given dibs on the machines with which they were most comfortable.

  These pod pilots sometimes painted things on the hatches, which was also supposedly against regulations. Some of the pods thus had names (“Pod Person”; “Magic Fingers”; “Bertha”; “Smilin’ Ed”) and designs (Scooby Do sitting on a rocket; a buxom blonde winking seductively; a kid running along with a pizza under the slogan “We Deliver!”).

  What Dave Chang saw on Zulu Tango’s hatch, illuminated by the pod’s running lights, was a grinning skull emblazoned with eagle wings. Painted below the skull, in red paint, were the words “Ride To Live, Live To Ride.”

  “Oh, boy,” Chang said, “we are in deep shit now.”

  “What?” asked Harris. The kid was strapped into a chair near Chang’s head; Chang was floating upside down next to the console Harris was attending. The kid was wearing a headset and had not clearly heard what Chang had said.

  Chang looked at Harris. “I said, ‘Why don’t you go up and see if he needs help with his suit?’”

  Harris studied Chang curiously. “I thought you said something else.”

  Chang shook his head. “You misunderstood me. I’ll take over there. Why don’t you go and help the beamjack out of his pod?”

  Bob Harris was new on Skycan, having arrived for his twelvemonth tour only two weeks before. He had grown up in San Francisco and had thus known Chinese-Americans all his life; he considered them to be the most straightforward and sincere people around. He was therefore willing to do anything his Chinese-American supervisor told him to do, and in fact regarded Dave Chang as his best friend on Olympus Station.

  Chang, on the other hand, had long since grown tired of Harris’ puppyish devotion, considered him a putz and thought he should be abused at any opportunity. He just smiled and nodded toward the hatch leading to the Docks.

  “Sure thing, Dave,” Harris said, returning the smile. He unbuckled his chair’s belt, floated upward and grabbed a pair of handholds, then began pulling himself toward the hatch. Chang settled into the chair and watched as Harris waited for the lights above the hatch to indicate that the MTDA had been pressurized. When the lights flashed green and a bell chimed, Harris un-dogged the hatch and pulled it open.

  Once Harris had floated into the chamber, Chang pushed himself toward the hatch, pushed it shut, and turned the locking wheel. After all, he mused, the orders had been not to let the beamjack out until Mr. Big and Dr. Feelgood arrived. He then went back to the console to watch the show on the TV monitor.

  The Docks was a narrow compartment about the size of one of the rim modules. There were five docking bays there, equilaterally separated by handrails and storage compartments. It was forever cold in the compartment, exposed as often as it was to vacuum. Only a few minutes earlier a ferry taking beamjacks out to the construction shack had departed from Olympus, so the heater had yet to take the edge off the chill.

  Puffing little clouds, Harris made his way to the third airlock; he could see the locking wheel turning as the pod pilot began to let himself out.

  He coasted in front of the hatch and grabbed hold of a rail overhead, hovering in front of the airlock as it swung open. As it did, he said cheerily, “Hi. Can I help you…?”

  A fabric snoopy helmet was flung through the open hatch with such force that it smacked into Harris’ chest. The young crewman, who had played a lot of basketball, instinctively made to grab it with both hands. His letting go of the rail and the impact of the helmet was enough to send him sailing into the bulkhead wall behind him. Fortunately he had developed enough zero g reflexes to grab another handrail before he bounced into another hard surface.

  With the rail gripped in one hand and the snoopy helmet—which, he now noticed, was trailing loose wires—clutched under his arm, he stared at the open airlock and watched the pod pilot clamber out.

  The ma
n who emerged was small, even by the standards of beamjacks, who never reached a height of over six feet. Five-five, probably the shortest admissible height for a Skycorp employee, but an awfully mean-looking five-five. With thin black hair combed straight back and a spade beard covering most of his lean face, the space worker would have looked filthy stepping out of a shower and ravenous coming away from a four-course meal.

  He pushed himself through the airlock with the practiced ease of a long-timer. Eyes as black as his hair fixed on Harris, and his gaze made the kid think of rattlesnakes he had seen in zoos.

  “Yeah, you can help me,” the pod pilot said, in a voice that was surprisingly soft. Floating in the middle of the compartment, he began to climb out of his spacesuit, releasing the top and bottom halves and pushing himself out of them. “You can help me by getting Cap’n Wallace’s ass down here so I can chew it off, you dig?”

  “Cap’n W-Wallace?” Harris stammered.

  “Y-yeah, Ca-Cap’n Wa-Wallace,” he mimicked with a sneer. He discarded his spacesuit carelessly, leaving it hanging in the air like a discarded carapace, unbelted his urine collection cup, and began to unzip his long underwear. Underneath he wore a black T-shirt and a pair of nylon gym shorts. “And if I don’t get him, I guess I’m just going to have to chew your ass instead.”

  “Uh-huh. Right away, ah, sir.” Harris hastily moved toward the compartment hatch, still carrying the damaged helmet under his arm. He grabbed the handle, but found it immovable. Chang had locked the hatch from the outside.

  Watching on the TV monitor in the whiteroom, Chang relished the expression of trapped fear that suddenly etched itself upon Harris’ face. “Meet Virgin Bruce, you little wimp,” he snickered.

  Bruce Neiman grabbed an overhead rail and swung himself closer to Harris, backing the kid against a bulkhead until their eyes were only a foot apart. “Looks like you’re locked in here with me, kid,” he said, his voice no longer so soft. “Maybe Wallace is already on his way up here to see me. Why don’t we take the time to get to know each other better.”