Orbital Decay

by Allen Steele

  “But if Skycorp builds more powersats…”

  “That’s right. Mass production will cover its own costs. For another thing, what’s wrong with the companies involved making that profit? They’re taking the risks, their stockholders are taking risks, so why shouldn’t they benefit from the end results? Besides, part of the rebuilding of the economy after the last depression means restoring American industry. The Europeans and the Japanese have full-fledged space capability of their own now, but they’re not doing anything on this scale. The Russians are on Mars and it looks like they’re gearing up for a Titan expedition, so there’s a matter of national presence in space to be dealt with. No other country, though, is taking this step, even though people like Peter Glaser and Gerard O’Neill were postulating it many years ago. It’s about time we got down to doing it, that’s all.”

  The anchorwoman consulted her notebook, and Hooker poured another cup of coffee. “Tell me a little about the job you’re taking,” she said. “You’re going to be in charge of the whole project. Are you…?”

  “Actually, I’ll only be in charge of the high part.” The smile again. Hooker winced. What a bloody Boy Scout. “The decisions will really be made in Huntsville, at Skycorp’s company headquarters. I’ll only be supervising the work and support crews on the project. Lester Riddell—who, you might remember, was my co-commander on the lunar expedition years ago—is to be in charge of operations at Descartes Base. We’re basically foremen, making sure that everything stays on schedule. They’re putting a pair of old space cadets up there, you might say.” The smile again.

  “So you’ll be up there for two years. What will you do in your free time, when you’re not working?”

  Henry G. Wallace chuckled. “Oh, I don’t know. I haven’t had much time to think about that. If I do have any free time… well, I’ll probably just look at the stars.”

  Francis put on a plastic smile. “Thank you for being with us this morning, Mr. Wallace.” She turned to the camera. “When we return, George Bingham will be giving us today’s weather, and Angela Hoffer will be talking with a man who practices ESP with dogs. On ‘Good Morning.’”

  Hooker grunted and reached for the morning mail as a commercial with Jane Fonda speaking for Geritol appeared. When he was a kid, outer space had fascinated him. That was in the days when the first shuttles were going up and space was big news. He remembered waking up early to catch the TV broadcasts of those launches, and the pictures of the Columbia and the Discovery and the Atlantis he had tacked to his bedroom walls in his family’s old house in southern Georgia. He smiled wistfully. There was a time when he had idolized astronaut Pinky Nelson, and wanted nothing more than to fly a space shuttle into orbit just like him.

  The good old days, long ago and far away. Hooker shook his head and leafed through the junk mail and bills. This is the crap that makes us grow old, he thought. If only we could forget about the high cost of living, advertisers trying to sell us stuff we don’t need, and ex-wives who pull disappearing acts. If only we could jump on a space shuttle for a trip away from Earth. Occasionally, he did make a rendezvous with his old obsession, at those times when he would find himself on the state’s Atlantic side. He would tell himself that Port Canaveral was a good place to make landfall for supplies for the return trip down the intra-coastal waterway, but the fact was that the rockets on Merritt Island would call to him as he sailed by. Once, he had anchored off the Cape and had watched an HLV lift off. He had sat in the aft deck, drinking beer as he watched the giant cargo ship thunder into the sky, and had imagined himself as a kid again, his dreams riding on that spaceship….

  Hooker frowned at his telephone bill. Damn it, had the rates gone up again while he wasn’t looking? He hardly used his phone at home, rarely making long-distance calls. How could the long-distance service charge be so high? Then he remembered the cellular phone he had installed on the Jumbo Shrimp II. He had put the billing on his home phone, so that would account for the charge.

  He shrugged. It was something he could take care of on the way to the dock, at the phone company’s branch office in Cedar Key. While he thought about it, Hooker got up and went into the bedroom, to his desk where he kept his cash box. He had a character flaw—a phenomenal capacity for bouncing checks, so whenever possible he kept much of his expense money in cash, to avoid embarrassments with his major creditors. He had cashed a check for two hundred dollars just the other day, and though it was pegged as grocery money, he had better get it to the phone company before…

  He opened the gunmetal gray box and stared into it. Empty. Not a green piece of paper in sight.

  Hooker shut the box slowly and stared at the top of it. He clearly remembered putting the money inside, and he hadn’t touched the stash since then, of that he was certain. The house was always locked when he was gone, and if someone had broken in, a lot of other valuable things would have been missing. No one had visited him, no one except…

  Laura, who had left the house before he had awakened.

  Hooker gritted his teeth, swore silently, and pounded the top of the metal box with his fist. Laura.

  Dammit to hell. This was one of the reasons why he had divorced the bitch.

  Attention, all crew members. Joni Lowenstein’s silky voice practically floated over the loudspeaker system, interrupting the continuous melodic mumble of the Muzak. OVT from Canaveral arriving at the Docks. Docking personnel on standby.

  Popeye Hooker blinked and glanced at the terminal’s screen. It was 1600 hours now. Where had that last hour gone? And what did he care?

  I’m getting stale in here, he thought. I’ve got to get out and do something. He eased aside his bunk’s curtain and swung his feet out. The Monopoly players barely noticed him, but ZeeGee the cat, startled by his sudden appearance, jerked her head up, stared at him, then bolted out of one guy’s lap and bounded up the ladder’s rungs to the catwalk outside—a feline feat made possible by the one-third gravity. Hooker followed the cat up the ladder, stepping around the game players as he exited the bunk-house. Cat’s got the right idea, he thought. When in doubt, run it out. Hell with it. I’m going to the meteorology deck and bug ’em into letting me use the telescope again. I want to look at the ocean.

  14

  Welcome to the Club

  VIRGIN BRUCE AND MIKE Webb were sitting in the rec room in Skycan’s western hemisphere when the intercom announced the arrival of the weekly OTV flight from the Cape. “Ah, now there’s a voice that can make a man’s groin throb,” Virgin Bruce said, and then he belched hugely from the near-beer he had been drinking, startling a couple of video-game players sitting next to them. The beer was nonalcoholic, and to Bruce’s palate it tasted like chilled dog whizz, but it was the nearest one could get to decent brew on the station and at least one could get a meaningful, satisfactory belch from the stuff.

  Webb looked up at one of the overhead displays and watched the little spacecraft making its final approach maneuver on the docks. “Hey, let’s go meet the new man, Brucie,” he said. “I’m bored.”

  Virgin Bruce drained the beer with one gulp, aimed at a nearby trash chute, and lobbed the can toward it. As to be expected, even with a straight-on shot from fifteen feet away, the Coriolis effect from the station rim’s spin caused the can to bounce off the bulkhead wall a couple of feet to the left of the target.

  The can landed at the feet of Mr. Big, who was standing in the miniature gym at one end of the compartment, with a pair of hundred-pound weights hefted above his head on his pillarlike arms. The big Navajo looked down at the can, then glared up at Virgin Bruce. “Pick it up and put it in the chute, Neiman,” the Navajo security chief growled, keeping the huge weights stationary over his head, with no visible strain.

  Virgin Bruce turned his head around and stared sulkily at Phil Bigthorn for a moment, then lazily heaved himself out of his chair, sauntered across the compartment, picked up the can and marched it over to the waste bin. With exaggerated fastidiousness he dropped it
into the chute, cast a foul look at Bigthorn—who responded in kind—then sauntered back to the table where Webb waited, watching the brief encounter. “Yeah, let’s get the fuck out of here,” he said, then added, in a louder voice, “the atmosphere’s getting a little strong in here, y’know.”

  When they had climbed up the ladder out of the compartment and were walking down the catwalk to the west spoke, Webb said, “You better watch how you’re pushing it with Mr. Big, man. He could be bad news if he wanted to jump you.”

  “Hell with him,” Virgin Bruce said, stepping aside to let a beamjack walking in the other direction pass by. “He and I’ve tangled before. He isn’t that tough. Let him try it again, man, I’ll send him back to the fuckin’ reservation in a bag. Who’s the new guy they’re sending up, y’know?”

  “I dunno what his name is,” Webb replied. “All I know is that he’s the new hydroponics engineer, the one who’s taking over for McHenry.”

  “Hydroponics engineer, right.” Virgin Bruce shook his head. “Either another Air Force type or a college boy. Chances are that once Wallace meets him and talks to the poor sonuvabitch, he’ll turn into another dedicated, regulation space hero. Shit.”

  “Hey, they don’t always turn out to be Major Matt Mason,” Webb said. Major Matt Mason was a toy spaceman dating back from the 1960s; the term was reserved, in derision, for crewmen who followed in Wallace’s approved path, the would-be stellar conquerors. “I mean, look at Sloane. He’s college-educated, into the whole space thing, y’know. But I’ve never heard him talking about this high frontier stuff.”

  “Yeah, okay, Sloane’s a good shit. But for once I’d like to sit down with one of these new arrivals and let ’em know right off the bat what this job is all about. Give ’em the facts of life before Wallace makes his speech and takes him on his inspiring little tour. I think…”

  Suddenly Virgin Bruce grinned and slapped Webb on the shoulder. “Hey, what the fuck! Why not?”

  “Why not what?”

  “We’re on the way up there now, aren’t we? Well, let’s take our little chickadee under our wing and show him the ropes ourselves.” Bruce stopped and turned to face Webb. “It’s always a few minutes after the new guys get off the ship before Wallace sees them, right? That Harris slug usually tells them to beat it to Command so that Wallace can play his head games first, but H.G. himself never shows up right away. So why don’t we head him off, give him the nickel tour of this joint before Wallace can sink his claws into him.”

  “I dunno,” Webb said. “Wallace is going to want to speak to him eventually. What if he finds out that we’ve already met the guy and…?”

  “So what?” Bruce threw up his arms. “What’s he gonna do about it? Kick us off the fuckin’ station? Hell, he’s the one who’s always harping about sticking together, making sure the new people get adjusted and all that.” He continued walking down the catwalk. “Besides, this could be fun. We could pull a head-game on the poor bastard.”

  “Like what?” Webb asked, running to catch up with Bruce.

  “Hell, I dunno. Lemme think about it.”

  They reached the end of the west hemisphere catwalk and descended a short flight of steps through a hatch into Module 29, the terminus module where the west spoke connected with the rim. Bruce turned to the ladder and put a hand and a foot on the rungs, then quickly stepped back from the ladder, making room for the long pair of legs coming down the shaft. “Hello, Joni,” he said. “Love your voice.”

  Joni Lowenstein descended the ladder and stepped off, not looking at Bruce. “Thanks,” she said curtly. Bruce didn’t step aside, but with only a moment’s hesitation she shouldered him aside. “You’re in my way, Bruce,” she added coolly.

  “I’m sorry. Let me make it up to you. Dinner tonight?”

  She laughed softly. “At the same place all of us eat, anyway? Thanks but no thanks.” She walked toward the steps leading to the east hemisphere catwalk. “I get enough grease in my food, anyway.”

  Webb and Virgin Bruce watched her as she walked up the steps and disappeared from sight. “Ooooh,” murmured Webb. “Touchy, touchy.”

  “I’m in love,” Bruce said. He grinned at Webb and slipped a hand under his shirt, pumping his hand up and down against the inside of the fabric. “Women with guts! I love ’em, Mike, I tell you I love ’em!”

  “Anderson tells me that she’s got it for Wallace.”

  “Anderson beats off with Playboy. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

  Bruce glanced up the spoke, made sure no one else was on the way down the ladder, then grabbed a rung and began to climb; Webb waited until he had disappeared through the terminus module’s ceiling, then grabbed the same ladder and followed. The slapping of their palms and the soles of their high-topped sneakers on the rungs reverberated in the tube as they climbed, all but drowning out “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” as it echoed from the loudspeakers.

  Neiman paused next to a recessed wall speaker and glared at it for a moment. He glanced up, then looked down at Webb. “Is anyone coming?” he asked.

  Webb checked and looked up at Virgin Bruce, shaking his head. The beamjack reached down to his hip, lifted a Velcro flap on his trousers and pulled out a pair of wire cutters and a Phillips head. Hooking his arms around the ladder, he quickly unscrewed the panel holding the speaker into the bulkhead wall, reached into it with the wire cutters and snipped its wires. The Muzak instantly ceased. Virgin Bruce, grinning like a cat, hastily replaced the panel and resumed his climb, all without saying a word to Webb.

  When they had arrived at the hub, the decrease in the gravity gradient had left them in microgravitational conditions; not absolutely weightless, but close enough in effect to zero g to be termed as much. They propelled themselves down the station’s core, past the hatches leading to the command decks, to the prep room and the Docks. Bob Harris was on duty, floating near the main control console, watching the TV screen overhead as the OTV inched its way toward a docking collar.

  “Hey, San Francisco!” Virgin Bruce yelled, clapping his hand on Harris’ shoulder with a force which nearly sent the kid reeling into the console. “What’s shaking, man?”

  Harris grinned weakly, his chin trembling, as he braced himself against the panel and looked over his shoulder at Virgin Bruce. “Oh, uh—hi, Bruce. We’re just, ah, getting the OTV in and, ah, getting ready to bring the new guy in, and, um, send Mr. Honeyman back home.”

  Both Virgin Bruce and Webb turned around and noticed, for the first time, the two other men in the compartment. Doc Felapolous was escorting Honeyman, the rookie space worker who had been in the whiteroom on Vulcan Station when the hotdog had blown out. Honeyman’s eyes were soporific and his limbs hung loosely in midair; he was obviously under sedation.

  Mike Webb took hold of a handrail and pulled himself closer to the drugged beamjack. “Hey, screamer,” he murmured. “So they’re sending you for a nice, long vacation on Fantasy Island, huh?”

  Honeyman’s glassy eyes slowly rose to meet Webb’s angry gaze. His mouth worked for a moment before the words came. “F-fuck you,” he said numbly.

  “Yeah, and fuck you, too. What were you doing when I was trying to save our hides, huh? How long did you stay hysterical, you goddamn…”

  Felapolous reached around Honeyman and savagely shoved his hand against Webb’s chest. “Leave him alone,” he snarled as Webb automatically thrust out his hands and rebounded off the opposite wall of the small compartment. “He’s had enough already, Webb.”

  Virgin Bruce grabbed Webb’s arm roughly, holding him back from both bouncing toward the other side of the compartment and launching himself at the man who had nearly perished with him during the accident. There was a thick moment of tension and silence, interrupted suddenly by the soft jar of the spacecraft docking and the simultaneous ping of an annunciator on Harris’ console. Virgin Bruce glanced over his shoulder at Harris, who continued to stare at both Webb and Honeyman. “Ship’s in, Bobby,” he said
calmly. “Want to do something about it?”

  Harris blinked, then checked a couple of displays on his console and pressed the intercom switch. “OTV docked and secure,” he murmured. “Pressurizing airlock.” He hit the switches that sent air into the airlock compartment beyond the connecting hatch.

  “You’re meeting the new hydroponics man, aren’t you?” Virgin Bruce asked Harris.

  “Ah, yeah,” Harris replied, visibly relieved by the small talk. “Wallace wants to see him right away, so I…”

  “So you’ve been sent to escort him down?” Harris nodded. “The red carpet treatment, huh? What’s his name?”

  Harris glanced at the checklist strapped to his right forearm. “Uh, Hamilton. Jack Hamilton. I…”

  “Right. Cap’n Wallace wants to meet him.” Virgin Bruce rubbed his jaw comptemplatively. “Listen, Frisco,” he said quietly, “Mike and I really wanted to meet this new guy. Give him the guided tour, so to speak. Now, it looks to me that your buddy Chang’s not on duty, so that leaves only one person up here, right? It also looks like Doc’s going to need a hand getting Honeyman on his way back home. So why don’t we both cut each other a favor. You stay here and assist the doctor, and Mike and I will take this guy down, show him the place and everything, and take him to meet the old captain. How about that?”

  Harris looked uncertainly at Doc Felapolous. The physician shrugged. “Go ahead, I guess,” he said noncommittally. “I need to have you here to help me with Honeyman. Besides, it’ll get these two out of my sight.” He cast a glare at both Webb and Virgin Bruce.

  “Sure, Bruce,” Harris agreed. “Whatever you say.” He glanced at a small sheet of printout he had magnetized to his console. “He’s been assigned to Bunkhouse 38. Do you want me to call the command deck and tell them you’re going to…?”