Orbital Decay

by Allen Steele

  “So? Let’s send a letter to the New York Times,” said Bruce. “Tip them off. Get something to CNN or CBS. Fuck, that’s what the press are there to do, to expose stuff like this.”

  Joni frowned pensively and gently thumped her fist on Bruce’s shoulder. “I don’t think so,” she said thoughtfully. “I’m sure a newspaper would be interested, yes, but we’d have to transmit anything we said to them. If this satellite system is what it’s rumored to be, then it could intercept our message as soon as we link with the normal communications channels, which we’d have to do eventually. I could figure out how to do it, but I can’t see any means of getting a message through to any public channel without being caught.”

  Hamilton nodded. “Sam and I thought of that when we were talking about this yesterday. Besides, if it got into the papers, how much real good would it do? Let’s face it. People down there have become apathetic after all the shit that hit the fan in the crazy years. How many people would pay attention? Hell, come to think of it, how many would even take Bruce’s stand and say that this kind of surveillance was a good thing?”

  “Hey, I get your point,” Bruce said quickly, waving his hands. “I see where this is something really twisted, y’know. But why are we the people who have to stop this?”

  “Who else do you have in mind?” Jack replied. “NASA? If they’re not in on it, then think about what a bang-up job they’ve done as a regulatory agency. They rubber-stamped the Vulcan blowout as being an unforseeable accident and dismissed the whole thing. You think they’d do much differently this time, when they’re renting launch facilities at the Cape to Skycorp and helping them with R&D?”

  “You’ve got a point,” Popeye said.

  Hamilton nodded. “Then who’ve you got left, who can be trusted? Which senators and congressmen who might not potentially be involved? How do you contact them if you think they could be trusted?”

  “The Russians,” Joni said.

  Virgin Bruce blew out his cheeks. “I ain’t cooperating with no fucking Commie.”

  “The Japanese,” Chang said.

  “Who knows? Maybe this is their revenge for Hiroshima.” Sloane shrugged. “I mean, there’s a chance that they could be involved, since there’s apparently some cooperation involved with other countries. When you think about the Tokyo riots and all the stuff that’s gone down over there…”

  “So what does that leave us?” Hamilton shrugged. “It comes down to us, guys. We’ve been thinking about it, Sam and I, and we have an idea. It’s risky as all hell, but the people in this room… which is why we picked just you few… could pull it off.”

  “Everyone here has a certain specialty,” Sloane said, leaning closer. “All of us can do something which could help…”

  “Hey,” Virgin Bruce said, pointing a finger at Sam’s face. “I’m not asking you, I’m asking him. Stop playing boy sidekick, okay?” He looked at Hamilton. “Let’s hear it from you, Jack. How do you think we can do something about this, if we can do anything?”

  “There’s no reason to be nasty about it,” Hamilton said, casting a glance at Sloane. “But if you want it from me, then here’s the lowdown. Besides the fact that everyone here has demonstrated themselves able to keep one secret, and therefore able to keep another… we hope… there’s also the fact that each has a certain area of specialization aboard the station. You and Popeye are used to working in space, Joni is a communications officer, Dave’s the Docks chief, and Sam’s a hacker. All this figures in a scheme Sam and I have figured out, of how we can put the Ear out of commission before it goes on-line.”

  He stopped and looked around at the others. “This is the point of no return, friends. If you don’t want to be in on this, go ahead and leave now. We’ll trust you to keep your mouth shut. But if you give a damn about little things like freedom of expression and the right of pioneers to decide what happens on the frontier, then I’d suggest that you stick around. But if you do, I’ll let you know now that you’re part of the conspiracy. There’s no backing out after this.”

  Jack fell quiet, and it was silent for a few moments in the compartment. Hooker stared at the seed racks and at the tomato vines growing at the far end of the module. I can leave now, he thought. This really shouldn’t involve me. I’ve got enough problems of my own. He noticed Dave Chang moving restlessly, as if he, too, were trying to make up his mind. I should go, Hooker thought. I should stay. I should climb up this ladder right now. But if I do, all the stuff I said a minute ago, what does that mean? He closed his eyes….

  And he didn’t get up to leave.

  When he opened his eyes, he noticed that no one else had left and Hamilton was looking directly at him. He nodded his head, and Jack nodded back, smiling. “Okay,” the hydroponics engineer said. “I’m glad to hear it. Sam?”

  Sloane turned back to his computer terminal and typed in another code. A graphic image of the respective orbits of Skycan and Freedom Station appeared on the screen. “We know that the Ear’s command module, the switchboard, arrived at Freedom a few weeks ago,” Jack began, “and that they’ll be using it to put the Ear on-line in a few days….”

  24

  Labor Day

  THE CREW OF OLYMPUS got Labor Day off. There were not many similarities between working on Earth and working in space, but one was that a few of the holidays—Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas—were observed as paid days off by Skycorp. Labor Day was another. Vital functions, such as life-support, command, and communications, were kept going of course, operated by a skeleton crew who were given triple-time holiday pay according to the company’s agreement with the union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. However, most of the crew was off, which gave the conspirators time to get organized.

  For Popeye, there wasn’t much to do. He and Virgin Bruce spent a couple of hours in the Docks with Chang, checking out the spacesuits they planned to pilfer from the prep room’s lockers. A freight OTV from Freedom Station had arrived at the Docks at 0800 earlier in the day, and once Chang had told Bob Harris again that he wasn’t looking well and that he should go back to his bunk and take care of himself, he and Bruce went to work on the little cargocraft—stripping the hold of everything unnecessary, lashing inside three extra oxygen tanks, and jury-rigging a latch handle to the inside of the hatch so that it could be opened from the inside. By this time, though, it had become apparent that Bruce and Chang could manage better on their own; a third man simply got in the way. So Popeye was excused from any more duties in the Docks.

  “I’ll go see if Sam and Jack need any help,” Popeye said on his way out of the airlock.

  Virgin Bruce shrugged, holding onto a rail with his right hand and cradling a welding laser under his left armpit. “Unless you really know your stuff with computer programming, I wouldn’t bother,” he replied. “Why don’t you go back to your bunk and get some shut-eye. You’ll need it.”

  Popeye glanced at his watch. It was only 1200; they weren’t scheduled for departure until 0300 the next morning. “I’m not that tired,” he commented.

  “Then go down to west rec and watch the baseball game,” Bruce replied, turning upside down as he prepared to enter the OTV’s open hatch. “Or go read a book. I dunno.” He pushed himself off and glided toward the hatch, while Chang reached up to take the laser from him and pull it down into the vehicle. “Geez, take it easy. That’s what I’d do.”

  But Popeye was too wound up to think about taking it easy. Every nerve felt like a stretched guitar string; he wasn’t in the mood to watch a baseball game or read another dog-eared paperback or magazine. As he shut the hatch of the prep room behind him, he realized that the thought of returning to Earth bothered him far more than anyone else in the conspiracy.

  He had always thought about that day, whenever it came, when he would go back home. It had been something for which he had longed over the course of the many months he had lived in space, but at the same time it filled him
with a secret, half-recognized dread. When he had imagined the event in his mind’s eye, it had been that vision of getting off a shuttle at the Cape with a hot salt breeze blowing against his face, of a slow, carefree stroll down the tarmac away from the spacecraft, of someone from Skycorp shouting after him, asking if he wanted his check, and him shouting over his shoulder to fold it and feed it to an alligator. He had never permitted himself to think about what would happen after that, but now he wondered: what would he do once he arrived home in Florida? He didn’t have the Jumbo Shrimp II anymore. He had sold his house long ago. And, of course, there was the question of Laura…

  Gold, gold, gold… little gold ring, twisting and turning, disappearing into the aquamarine, reflecting the setting sun as it disappeared… gone, forever gone…

  He shut his eyes tightly. Don’t think about it, he said to himself.

  Going home would not be the way he had always imagined.

  Hooker opened his eyes and pushed himself down the axis shaft, heading toward the spokes and the access ladders which would take him back to the modules. He looked ahead, and saw at the far end of the shaft the hatch to Meteorology, the pit at the south polar end of the station, where the bogus meteorologists worked. He found himself staring at the hatch as he drifted closer. Even before the meeting in Hydroponics and Hamilton’s disclosure of the NSA’s involvement with Big Ear, he had not been to Meteorology in many weeks; only a couple of times, in fact, since the day of the hotdog blowout at Vulcan Station. Since then, his desire to look at Earth through the telescope had diminished considerably, but now he felt an impulse to haul himself down there, push the intercom button, and ask if he could come in and spend a few minutes with the telescope.

  No, he thought, that would probably not be a good idea. He and the others were too close to the start of the deed which would destroy the Ear. It was conceivable that, in some unforseen way, his trip to the weather station might somehow tip off Bob, John, and Dave that a plot was afoot. He squelched the notion almost as soon as it occurred to him, although, he thought, it would be funny if Dave knew the consequences of his stoned conversation with Jack Hamilton.

  It was therefore blind, dumb coincidence that, as soon as Popeye reached the open hatch leading to the west spoke’s access shaft, who should push himself through the same shaft with a plastic bag full of sandwiches in his hand but Dave the meteorologist, a.k.a. Jack Jarrett, agent for the National Security Agency.

  Dave, or Jarrett—Popeye couldn’t think of him by any other name than Dave—nearly bumped into him before he recognized Hooker. Then it was with quiet surprise that he looked around at the beamjack. “Hey, Popeye!” Dave exclaimed. “Long time no see!”

  “Hi, Dave. Fetching lunch for the boys?”

  “Yeah.” Dave held the bag of sandwiches up, regarding it glumly. “Wish some more food would get up here soon. Third day in a row we’ve been stuck with tuna. Haven’t seen you down here lately. What’s the matter, become tired of looking through the telescope?”

  “Something like that.” Hooker felt himself getting a little uneasy in Dave’s presence, and he did a slow somersault to ease his feet in the proper direction for entering the access shaft. “I’ll come by sometime, if you’re not too busy.”

  “Well…” Dave seemed to hesitate. “You’re welcome to visit, but not for the next couple of days. We’re going to be pretty busy down here.”

  Yeah, I just bet you will be, Hooker thought, and he suddenly felt a surge of anger rise in him. Son of a bitch has a big mouth when he gets high, blabs everything to someone about the Big Ear, and still he tries to put on a front about being a meteorologist. Unbelievable gall…

  Impulsively, Popeye said, “Getting your ears checked, huh, Dave?”

  The NSA agent’s eyes went wide and Popeye was immediately sorry he had said anything. “What do you mean?” Dave said, staring at Hooker. Then, recovering himself, he said, “I don’t know what you mean, Popeye.”

  It was so absurd—Dave’s first and second reactions to a simple comment—that Hooker had to laugh contemptuously. “Shouldn’t talk so much when you’re ripped, Jack,” he said, eschewing caution as he enjoyed the dig. “I’m surprised that the Agency hasn’t briefed you guys about the dangers of smoking dope while on duty.”

  Jarrett’s face went red and his eyes bored into Hooker’s. He started to stammer, then managed to collect himself. “If I were you,” he whispered angrily, “I’d keep your goddamn mouth shut, sailor!”

  “About what, spook?” Popeye whispered back, enjoying himself. Screw caution. This was too good to miss. “You smoking dope, or the Big Ear?”

  “I never said anything about the Ear to him!” Jarrett hissed.

  Popeye was about to make another sarcastic remark, but looking into the phony weatherman’s eyes, he was struck suddenly by a startling, absolutely bewildering revelation: Dave actually looked as if he were telling the truth.

  Popeye looked at Dave suspiciously. “Okay, let’s be straight with each other. If you can be straight with anyone. You got stoned with Jack Hamilton, didn’t you?”

  Dave returned the suspicious look. “If I did, why should I tell you?” he said, hesitating.

  Popeye nodded his head. “I’m going to take that as a confirmation.”

  “How would you know?”

  “Because word travels fast around Skycan,” Popeye replied. “Maybe you and your buddies keep out of arm’s reach of everyone here, but if you didn’t know by now, there isn’t much that’s secret in this place. No, don’t let it bother you. Only Jack, you, and I know about it.”

  Dave visibly relaxed. “Okay, so maybe I did.” He seemed to be studying Popeye’s face. “So what’s this about… um, what are you talking about with this Big Ear business?”

  “You mean you’ve never heard about the Big Ear?” Popeye asked.

  “No,” Dave said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You said you did, just a moment ago.”

  Dave’s face turned red again. His mouth opened and closed in confusion as he tried to muster an answer. Finally he glared at Popeye. “Listen to me, pal. I don’t know where you’ve heard about the Ear, but if you were smart, you’d keep your mouth shut about it. Understand? If I hear you make another sound about it…”

  “I heard about it because you told Jack,” Popeye interrupted. “I heard about it because you told him…”

  “I didn’t say anything about it to Hamilton,” Dave said. “That’s the truth. And if you say anything more about it to anyone…”

  “Back off. Jack!” Popeye snarled, feeling both angry and bewildered. “Who are you trying to threaten? You try anything with me, and word gets back to your bosses in Washington, or wherever, that one of their agents has been blowing joints with civilians!”

  Dave’s lips pursed in a thin, tight line. He stared at Hooker for a moment longer, then swung his body around so that he faced the Meteorology compartment. “Just keep your mouth shut, asshole, or you’re going to be sorry.” Then he pushed himself away, carrying his bag of sandwiches.

  Popeye watched him go, then propelled himself down the spoke shaft, heading for the rim modules at a pace which was literally breakneck. He would grab the ladder rungs when he needed to stop himself from falling, but right then he needed speed.

  Jack Jarrett had not told Hamilton about the Big Ear. That much was practically certain in his mind. If Jarrett was indeed telling the truth, then that made Hamilton a liar.

  A liar, at least, about everything except the NSA’s interest in the Big Ear. Jarrett had overlooked an important fact in his anger: The existence of the satellite network, in itself, was not a closely kept secret, and the only thing he could possibly be upset about Hooker’s knowing was the true purpose of the Big Ear. So that part of the story which Hamilton had told Popeye and the others was apparently true.

  What was apparently a lie was how Hamilton had found out about it. Popeye intuitively felt, and had at least circumsta
ntial evidence to prove, that Jarrett had not spilled the beans about the Big Ear to Jack Hamilton.

  So how did Hamilton know about the Ear’s secret? Hooker intended to find out.

  Popeye thought he would find Hamilton and Sloane in the computer bay, where they were supposed to be working on the program, but when he got there, he found the Data Processing bay vacant. It was 1218 by this time, so he took a shot in the dark; he jogged down the catwalk until he reached Modules 25 through 28, the mess deck. As he had figured, they had gone over there to get lunch.

  He found them in Module 27, sitting across from each other at one of the long tables near the serving counter. Many other members of the crew were also in the three compartments which made up the dining room; behind the counter, Emil the Slob was placing another tray of chicken-flavored grease out for the guys to dig into. The smell did its usual trick on Popeye, revolting him and making him hungry at the same time, but he ignored it and went to the table where Sam and Jack were hunched over their trays.

  The mess deck was one of the few sections of Skycan left where Muzak was still piped through the speakers, since no one had yet dared to cut the wires there as had been done throughout the rest of station. “Promises, Promises” floated through the compartment, ignored by the crewmen who apathetically chewed on their reconstituted repast. As Hooker sat down next to Sloane, Hamilton lifted a forkful of lumpy mashed potatoes and quietly murmured, “There aren’t going to be many things about this place I’m going to miss….”

  “But you’re really going to miss the food, right?” Sloane shook his head. “Jack, if you’d been here as long as I have and seen as many guys come and go from here as I have, you’d know that’s hardly an original observation. Hi, Popeye.”

  Hooker ignored Sloane. He wasn’t in the mood for social graces. “You lied to us, Jack,” he said in a ragged whisper, a little out of breath from his run halfway around the circumference of the catwalk.