Analog SFF, December 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "Where away, Sister Dusty?” Brother Page hailed from the front pew, using the ancient mariner's term for direction that Seekers had adopted as a greeting.

  "Where I must go.” I motioned at the ceiling. “I'm impressed by the setup."

  "Helps the congregation put the world into its proper perspective—something I'm afraid too many Seekers fail to do these days."

  I didn't need Brother Page to tell me about the trouble caused by misguided Seekers. Every week brought a new divinely ordained attack or explosion. The greatest strength and weakness of the Seeker movement was that each congregation was independent. Unfortunately, too many extremist preachers exploited this with an overly strict view of how simply humans should live. I wished more of them were like Brother Page.

  As the stars slowly orbited our bodies, Brother Page and I talked about my destiny. I asked him why God let me be kicked out of NASA when my destiny was to reach space. Instead of explaining that contradiction, Brother Page merely said my ultimate fate was extremely complex.

  By the end of our talk, the Big Dipper was rising behind the altar. I smiled as I glanced at Brother Page's brown robes, which meant he had yet to achieve his own destiny. He then asked if I remembered Sister Tess Harqo.

  "She was a few years older than me,” I said, remembering the girl with stern, fanatical eyes from our congregation. Tess once told me I was going to Hell for reading a science fiction book during choir practice. “I didn't know her too well."

  "Well, she now runs her own aerospace company. Needs a pilot for a special job and specifically wants a Seeker."

  I was stunned. Only a few Seekers sought out high-tech jobs, let alone fanatics like Tess. However, getting canned by NASA had made me persona non grata with every private space company, so I eagerly accepted Brother Page's offer to recommend me to Tess. He then leaned in close. “Sister Harqo has been presented with an amazing opportunity to meet her destiny,” he whispered. “But she needs the help of a Seeker with your skills. Doing so may guide you both to your ultimate goals."

  I thanked him. As I left, I asked Brother Page a question that had nagged me for years: Does our focus on destiny keep Seekers from understanding the true world around us? Brother Page paused for a moment, then shook his head. “That's not simply a Seeker problem,” he said. “Most people spend so much time looking at the future that they fail to live in the present. Unless we focus on this world and what we have here, everything is lost."

  As always, I was amazed at Brother Page's insight.

  * * * *

  Talking with Johnie left me in a sour mood. I was tempted to infodump Tess and let her know about Johnie's call, but I kept quiet because I didn't want Tess to panic and scrub the mission or for some snoop to intercept and decode our signal. Besides, I was nearing our target, the aerostat Gossamer Angel.

  Like the Beatrice, the Gossamer Angel was a variation Roziere balloon, her stadium-size envelope supporting what most people believed to be a reinforced photoreconnaissance gondola. The aerostat's envelope was made of a one-micrometer-thick hybrid polymer which, when charged with a weak electrical current, changed from transparent to reflective. Doing this enabled one to alternately heat and cool the envelope's different helium chambers using solar radiation, thereby maintaining altitude with minimal fuel use. One could also heat the helium using electric heaters, but that obviously used more energy.

  High-altitude balloons had become a viable alternative to satellites after the second ablation cascade event. While the chain-reaction sprawl from impacting satellites and debris didn't keep people from reaching space, it made the job even riskier. A hundred years after Sputnik, getting into orbit was still expensive and dangerous. Add in rogue satellites and a debris field in the millions, and the dangers and costs increased even more. Hence the blockade by the major spacefaring nations. They called it a safety issue, but over time it became more about keeping control than keeping everyone safe.

  Without access to space, poor countries and companies without connections turned to high-altitude balloons to replace expensive satellites. The ceiling for these balloons was between fifty and sixty-five kilometers and they could stay there for up to a year. In fact, the biggest problem with the balloons was getting them to come down when you wanted. That's where Tess's company came in, repairing balloons in flight so they could be retrieved.

  However, the Gossamer Angel's problem wasn't that it wouldn't come down. Instead, its payload wouldn't go up. I was supposed to fix that.

  As I carefully edged the Beatrice closer to the Angel, Bee announced that Johnie was again calling on tight beam. “Dusty, I want to apologize,” Johnie's voice whined.

  I laughed and disconnected him again. While the most Seeker of virtues was forgiveness, I wasn't done letting Johnie stew in his own juices.

  * * * *

  I met Sister Tess Harqo at a hip retro coffee shop in Houston. After a perfunctory “Where away, Sister Dusty,” she launched into a diatribe against the teenager behind the counter, who'd tried to put gened milk in her old-fashioned double mocha latte. She was still a true believer who saw the world in frigid hues of right and wrong. She even wore the brown robes indicating she'd yet to achieve her destiny—robes worn in public by only the most fundamentalist of Seekers. But since I was desperate for a shot at space, I kept my mouth shut.

  Tess had made her fortune on high-altitude balloons. But instead of launching them, she maintained them, sending up a single repair balloon each year to fix or retrieve broken high fliers. From what I'd heard, her main problem was finding good pilots. Everyone with the needed qualifications preferred to work for NASA or the private space companies, which paid more and let people go all the way into space.

  Tess got right to the point. There was a special balloon stuck in the mesosphere and she wanted me to fly the repair mission. When I asked why, she told me about the old Project Far Side rocket system of the 1950s. The project used balloons to carry rockets to twenty-five kilometers in altitude, where the rockets were launched through the balloon's envelope at seventy g's. I was instantly intrigued.

  "If someone did that from sixty kilometers,” Tess said, “I don't think anyone would have time to stop the rocket. The blockade succeeds because traditional rockets launch at slow speeds in the dense sea level air. In the mesosphere, a rocket could reach 5,600 kph in two seconds, and almost thirty thousand kph not long after. The blockade systems wouldn't have time to react."

  "It'd be expensive,” I said. “Are you putting up the money?"

  "Don't have to. A certain unnamed country already launched the balloon. But the rocket failed to fire and they've secretly contracted me to fix it. I need someone I can trust to fly the repair mission. Brother Page says you're the one."

  I imagined how shocked Johnie and all those fools at NASA would be. Unless they shot down every high-altitude balloon, their blockade would cease to exist. While this wasn't the same as going into space, I grew excited at the plan.

  "So are you in or out?"

  I looked at Tess and wondered how much of a fanatic she was. Still, Brother Page had vouched for her. I was in.

  * * * *

  I piloted the Beatrice until we were thirty meters from the edge of the Gossamer Angel's envelope, and even farther from the Angel's gondola. Fortunately there was no wind in the mesosphere—in fact, almost no atmosphere at all—to mess up our approach. I extended the thin support boom toward the Angel's gondola like an impossibly long finger. I snagged the repair hook on the second try, anchoring our two ships together.

  I quickly dressed in my pressure suit—essentially a space suit combined with a high-altitude parachute system—then walked into the cabin's small airlock. The air up here had less than 1/1000th the pressure at sea level, and depressurization would kill me as fast as if in deep space. As I opened the outer airlock door, I ordered Bee to begin continuous communications. If I fell, I wanted Tess to know where to look for me.

  The world turned slowly beneath me w
hile Bee maneuvered the Beatrice so the support boom angled slightly down. Aside from not feeling the weightlessness of free fall, I could have been in orbit. I wondered if God gave credit for being close to your destiny?

  Once the Beatrice was higher than the Angel, I hooked the slider to my support harness and the slider to the boom, ignoring how the boom shivered as it arched between the two balloons. The boom's weight limit wasn't much more than what I weighed in my pressure suit. I pushed off from the Beatrice, keeping my eyes on the gondola rushing toward me. If the boom or slider broke, it would take me less than thirty seconds to reach the speed of sound. From what others had told me, I'd feel like I was standing still. If my drogue chute tangled, the flat spin would knock me unconscious. By the time I hit the cloud deck fifty klicks below, I'd be the fastest free-falling human in the world.

  Not that I had any indication of falling. Even though Joe Kittinger proved a century ago that you could parachute from this height, and a few rich fools did so every year, I had no desire to take the chance.

  A dozen meters from the Angel I hit the slider's brakes and eased up to the gondola's maintenance ledge. This was the most dangerous part of the mission. Inside the gondola was a small rocket, carrying an even smaller satellite. If the rocket launched while I was on the gondola, I'd die instantly.

  I plugged a direct line from Bee into the gondola's system and the computer transmitted the security code to open the access panel. The gondola bumped and shook to the panel's movement, and I prayed the vibrations wouldn't trigger the rocket. I then carefully disconnected the primary and secondary launch initiators. Once done, I breathed a sigh of relief and plugged Bee into the repair jack. The computer verified several problems, including a faulty router for the launch initiators and some type of programming block in the system.

  To transport a new router I had to return to the Beatrice. I slid back down the boom after Bee lowered the Beatrice's height.

  After I took off my pressure suit, Johnie again tight-beamed me. I considered bragging to him about what I'd just done—after all, sliding between balloons at sixty kilometers was more exciting than anything he'd ever do in space. But in the end, I decided his stew wasn't done cooking, so I didn't answer his call.

  * * * *

  When the Beatrice launched, I'd been prepared for everything except silence. Where moments before the hiss of gas and the clanks of access tubes and restraints had echoed through the pressurized cabin, the moment I was cut free, silence overwhelmed me.

  Beatrice rose through an overcast sky, the wind blowing slightly, the mists beading on the windows. Then the ship cleared the clouds in an explosion of sunlight. We continued to climb, and within minutes the blue of Earth's atmosphere hung below me.

  While I stared in awe at the sight before me, Brother Page tight-beamed me. “How is it?” he asked. “I mean, the mesosphere's not your destiny, but it's close."

  I thanked him again for recommending me to Tess. I then asked if he'd ever had the urge to go into space.

  "Once. Back in graduate school, before I found my true calling, I studied noctilucent clouds. Those are thin clouds of water ice up above eighty-five kilometers. Very rare and hard to find because they're extremely faint. We still don't fully understand how they occur."

  I tried to imagine how clouds could exist at such a height, but my mind couldn't wrap around the idea.

  "Anyway,” Brother Page continued, “after graduation NASA offered me a research position, which would have eventually let me visit a space station to study the clouds. But by then I'd joined the Seekers, and my destiny wasn't in space. Still, I've always wondered what I'd have found up there."

  I smiled and said if I saw any of the clouds I'd send him a recording.

  * * * *

  By the second day of repairs, I'd made two more trips to the Gossamer Angel and replaced the launch initiator router, along with another faulty system. However, the software block was still holding us up. Tess contacted the rocket's host country and recommended reloading the programming system from scratch. However, her contacts were reluctant to tight-beam the new programming for fear a snoop would intercept the transmission. They were also hesitant to trust us with their main security codes, even though Bee carried everything needed to directly reload their programming. Eventually, though, the host country people realized they had too much invested in the project to back down, so they gave us the security codes and the go-ahead.

  I slid back to the Angel while Bee uploaded the new software. Out above the horizon, the reflected star of Freedom 2 moved toward me. I wondered if Johnie was watching me through one of the station's cameras or if he'd lost interest. Either way, he'd get a shock when the Gossamer Angel launched the first unauthorized satellite in a decade.

  "Upload complete,” Bee whispered in my ear. “Reactivate launch initiators.” I did that and verified everything was go. Now that I was again standing beside a live rocket, I was anxious to return to the Beatrice and put some distance between us. “What's the launch window?” I asked Bee as the access hatch closed automatically.

  "Next window is ten minutes. After that, windows repeat every hour and a half."

  I nodded absently and prepared to slide back to the Beatrice. Just then I caught sight of the Freedom 2 station moving through the black sky above my position. I wondered if Johnie would try to tight-beam me again or if he'd finally realized I was still pissed and...

  I paused. “Bee, what's the rocket's target altitude?” I asked.

  "360 km."

  That wasn't right. The rocket was supposed to place the satellite in high Earth orbit, not low orbit. And why would the launch window so closely mimic the appearance of Freedom 2, which orbited the Earth almost sixteen times a day. I told Bee to reaccess the Angel's system. This time, access was denied.

  "Bee, why don't we have access? Didn't we override the old security codes?"

  "Access denied."

  I tried the earlier access codes, but nothing worked. I was locked out of the entire system, unable to even reopen the Angel's access panel. I asked Bee to prepare a tight beam to Tess at headquarters, but Bee said communications access was denied. When I ordered the computer to lower Beatrice so I could slide back, it again said access was denied.

  Right then the gondola pinged from thermal expansion and my heart jumped at the thought of the rocket igniting. Only Tess could override my access with Bee. Her fanatical eyes burned in my memory as I realized she'd hijacked the rocket. I also remembered the rumor blaming a Seeker for the last cascade event. As I watched the bright star of Freedom 2 cross the sky above me, I knew what the rocket's target was.

  Only when the station arched away from me did I finally relax. But relief was temporary. I had no doubt the rocket would fire in an hour and a half when Freedom 2 came back around. I was still trying to figure out what to do when Tess tight-beamed an encrypted info dump. “Show me the dump,” I ordered Bee, even though I no longer trusted the computer.

  A simile of Tess appeared on my suit's visor, looking to my eyes like she was standing in the air before me. She now wore the pure white robes of a Seeker celebrating attainment of her destiny. “I see you've discovered my little trick,” she said with a serene smile.

  I asked the simile what the hell it was up to, but the simile wasn't programmed for that question. I rephrased. “What are you doing?"

  "I'm launching the rocket at the biggest target in the sky. All the previous debris sprawls have been too small to achieve a significant cascade. But a major space station exploding? That'll block access to space for decades. Maybe longer."

  I stared at Tess, wanting to punch the image floating before my eyes. “You used me,” I muttered.

  To my surprise, the simile was programmed for that comment. “I deeply apologize for that. But my destiny is to stop humans from reaching space. Unless we focus on this world and what we have here, everything is lost."

  A sudden razor-thought edged through my stomach. I'd heard those word
s before. “Who gave you your destiny?” I asked.

  The simile smiled. “Why, Sister Dusty, I thought you'd never ask. Brother Page gave it to me."

  As the gondola pinged again, I suddenly knew that my destiny no longer lay in space.

  * * * *

  Since Bee wouldn't lower the aerostat, I couldn't slide back and override her controls. I considered climbing hand over hand along the boom, but that was more than 130 meters and I didn't think I could do it in my pressure suit. Besides, Tess had only given me until the next launch window to jump from the Gossamer Angel. She'd sworn she'd pick me up, even tell the authorities I was an unwitting pawn in her scheme. Not that anything would reverse the damage she was about to do.

  I considered smashing the Angel's access panel, but without heavy tools I couldn't accomplish anything. I might also cause the rocket to launch prematurely, and I refused to let Tess and Brother Page be the death of me.

  The only option was the balloon's envelope.

  Releasing my safety harness, I threw the hook end toward the guide lines at the top of the gondola. On the third try, the hook snagged. I tugged hard, guessed it would hold, then climbed up.

  The Gossamer Angel's helium tanks were arrayed along the outside edge of the gondola, so the rocket could shoot up the middle without hitting them. There was no way I could reach the rocket, but fortunately for me balloon designers were descended from a long line of redundancy-loving engineers. The Gossamer Angel's designer had placed the back-up valves for the helium lines along the gondola's top edge so someone like me could access them if needed. While I couldn't release the helium inside the envelope, I could open the valves and pump all the remaining helium into the envelope.

  As soon as I opened the first valve, the Gossamer Angel began to rise. The Beatrice's access boom strained, pulling the aerostat along with us. Then the boom released as Bee's safety protocols kicked in.