The Trikon Deception

by Ben Bova

  “Scandals used to put a lot of bread and butter on my table.”

  “And when they didn’t occur spontaneously, you invented them.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “Some of us have longer memories than others.” Adamski opened the box, revealing a set of glittering surgical tools. He selected an assortment of scalpels, scissors, and tubes and placed them carefully on a towel.

  “Are you preparing to perform an autopsy?” Weiss asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “What would you say killed them?”

  “It would be inappropriate to venture a guess.”

  “Don’t guess, Professor. Hypothesize, theorize. Take a look at that adult there. What do you think killed it?”

  “Weiss, I don’t give a damn about your new legitimate journalistic career. I’m not telling you a goddamned thing.”

  “Pretend you’re not talking to me.”

  Adamski looked at the whale lying in a tidal pool twenty feet past the front of the van, big as a cross-country bus or a tractor-trailer rig. A wrinkle crossed his brow, then faded.

  “The storm,” he said.

  “Bullshit the storm,” said Weiss. “I inspected each one of these whales and they look emaciated, just like the ones in San Diego.”

  “Thank you for your observation, Mr. Weiss. You have just cut my workday in half.” Adamski rolled the instruments in the towel and stuck it under his arm.

  “Not so fast, Professor. You performed an autopsy last week on those San Diego whales. You must have the results by now.”

  Adamski turned away and slogged into the tidal pool. Weiss was right at his heels.

  “Is that a yes? Is that a yes, Professor Adamski? Or are you going to tell me that a storm killed those whales, too?”

  Adamski put his nose an inch from Weiss’s.

  “I have been quoted by you for the last time,” he said, baring his teeth and enunciating each word very carefully. “Now you either leave me to my work or I’ll ask one of those police officers to eject you.”

  Weiss backed off. As soon as Adamski disappeared behind the first carcass, he set out looking for the young redhead he had spoken to earlier. He found her scraping green gunk from an adult’s baleen into a plastic container.

  “Hi, remember me?” he said.

  “You were looking for Professor Adamski,” she said. “Did you find him?”

  “Yes, thank you. Nice guy. Do you work with him often?”

  “First time. He flew in from San Diego to review our marine mammal protection project. Then this happened.”

  “He didn’t exactly have the time to talk to me, but he did say all of you fine young people would cooperate. I wonder if I could ask you some questions.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Sorry. I’m Aaron Weiss. The Aaron Weiss TV Tabloid. Remember?”

  “Oh God, you’re right!” The young woman’s sudden smile crossed the line from charmingly cute to downright goofy. She said her name was Sandy. Weiss immediately knew that he had an ally.

  “Do you know much about whales?” he asked.

  “Not really. I’m an English major at Florida State and I’m working at Sea World for the summer. But I did write a bio paper last semester on the diets of several species of baleen whales.”

  “Great,” said Weiss. “Are you familiar with the whales that were found off San Diego?”

  “Sure am. That’s all we talked about this week.”

  “Isn’t it true that they were thousands of miles from where they should have been?”

  “That’s right,” said Sandy. “Right whales ordinarily spend their summers off the Alaskan coast.”

  “What about these whales?”

  “They’re far from home, too. I can’t say exactly, but generally the right whales of the North Atlantic should be up around the mouth of the St. Lawrence this time of year.”

  “What are they doing here?”

  “They could have been sick and the sickness disoriented them.”

  “What about the hurricane?”

  “I don’t know. I guess it could have killed them.” Sandy scraped more gunk into a separate container.

  “What’re you doing there?” Weiss asked.

  “Different species of whales eat different types of food,” said Sandy. “Grays prefer small, schooling fish. Blues prefer small crustaceans. Right whales and bowheads feed on phytoplankton and zooplankton. They siphon water through their mouths and their baleen plates catch the plankton. This green stuff looks like seaweed. They can’t eat that.”

  “Why are you interested?”

  “It’s Professor Adamski’s orders.”

  “Why is he interested?”

  “Could have something to do with the autopsies of the San Diego whales.”

  “The autopsies.” Weiss drew out the words in a knowing tone. “What were the results again?”

  “I’m not exactly sure of the technical conclusion,” said Sandy. “But everyone around here is pretty sure those whales starved to death.”

  “In the ocean?” Weiss couldn’t contain his surprise. “Those whales starved to death in the Pacific Ocean?”

  “That’s the rumor.”

  “And Adamski wants to see if these did, too,” said Weiss.

  “I guess so,” Sandy said.

  Weiss looked down at his feet. Wavelets lapped against his jeans. A single minnow darted around his shoes. Something big was happening. Something bigger than politics, bigger than war, bigger than any scandal he ever had uncovered. He thanked Sandy for her help and rushed around the carcasses until he found Tucker.

  “Come on,” he said, grabbing the cameraman by the collar.

  “I’m not finished.”

  “Fuck ’em. We’ve learned all we can from here for now.” He started back toward the Rover.

  “Where’re we going?” asked Zeke. He had to run to keep up.

  “Remember a few years ago,” said Weiss, ignoring the question because he had no real answer, “NASA had all those wigged-out ideas for manufacturing oxygen for long duration space flights. Remember what they were going to use?”

  “Plants.”

  “Not exactly plants. Plankton. Phytoplankton. Microscopic bugs that’re the most efficient oxygen-producing organisms on the planet. Better than trees.”

  “So?”

  “These whales eat plankton. They also look like they died of starvation, along with the ones in San Diego.”

  “What’s that add up to?”

  “Damned if I know,” Weiss said, puffing now, sweating as he scurried across the hot sand toward the waiting Rover. “But it’s something big. I can feel it in my bones.”

  Tucker made no reply. He knew that an Aaron Weiss hunch meant there was a story waiting to be uncovered. Besides, Zeke had that same quivering feeling along his spine.

  17 AUGUST 1998

  SPACE SHUTTLE CONSTELLATION

  It is important to realize that space workers are not astronauts in the original sense of the term. Their function is not to pilot spacecraft or explore other bodies of the solar system. They are not trained pilots or former military officers.

  Space workers live and work in orbiting facilities such as the Trikon Station for extended periods of time, much as oil-rig workers go to remote sites such as the Alaskan North Slope or platforms far out in the North Sea. They perform construction and maintenance tasks or conduct scientific research under conditions that cannot be duplicated on Earth. They live in isolation and with the constant knowledge that there is less than half a centimeter of aluminum separating them from the extremely hostile environment of space.

  There is no predicting how a particular person will react to life in an orbiting facility. Test pilots seemingly immune to motion sickness have been stricken by severe nausea during the early portions of their time in space. Calm, seemingly well-adjusted scientists and technicians have developed whole constellations of personality dysfunction symptoms that the psychologis
ts have dubbed Orbital Dementia.

  Apparently, Orbital Dementia is similar to the psychological malady found among certain members of Antarctic “winterover” teams, but is overlaid with the physical stresses unique to the microgravity environment of outer space. Studies have revealed three general phases. In the first, the person will be cranky and/or angry. In the second, the person will become reclusive. In the third, the person will become violently aggressive, even murderous or suicidal. Transdermal motion-sickness pads have been developed to counteract nausea until the person adjusts to weightlessness. But so far, no such “quick-fix” remedy has been developed for Orbital Dementia. Psychologists and psychiatrists have studied the experiences of the Skylab, Salyut, and Mir missions, as well as Antarctic “winterover” teams, but have failed to devise a test that will accurately predict a person’s behavior in space. One psychologist likened the task to predicting the weather. I think it more akin to trying to predict an earthquake.

  —The diary of Fabio Bianco, CEO, Trikon International

  Hugh O’Donnell felt his teeth loosening, his spine coming apart, the breath leaving his chest in a rush of involuntary grunts. God, don’t let me piss myself. Don’t let me…

  The thunder of Constellation’s lift-off obliterated his thoughts. He fought to raise his eyes toward the digital clock on the bulkhead above the middeck storage lockers. His neck slapped back against the headrest after a single, stroboscopic glance. Mission time was T plus forty seconds. Eight minutes of this. That was what the instructor had said. Eight minutes of sheer hell before serenity.

  The thunder suddenly stopped. Shit goddammit engine failure. We’re falling I’m gonna die. Still he felt as if a gang of giants were pressing down on him. He wrenched his head to the right. Next to him, Lance Muncie still bucked crazily in his seat, hands plastered to the armrests, his face twisted as if he were peering into the mouth of hell. O’Donnell managed another glance at the clock. T plus fifty seconds. That’s right. That’s why the silence. The shuttle had gone past Mach 1.

  “Main engines at sixty-five percent.” The voice of Commander Williams crackled over the loudspeaker as flat and calm as a scorekeeper’s at a tennis match. O’Donnell and the other eleven passengers bound for posts on Trikon Station were stacked in the middeck of the converted old NASA orbiter. Constellation had completed more than thirty missions before being purchased by Trikon International in 1994. It was an ungainly-looking vehicle compared to the Europeans’ spiffy little Hermes, or the six sleek aerospace planes developed jointly by NASA, Rockwell, and Boeing. But the space shuttle could haul more payload than the space plane, and Hermes was just beginning its flight test program. Reliable old Constellation’s generous cargo capacity was essential to the maintenance of Trikon Station.

  “Roger,” said the ground. By popular vote, the passengers had requested a feed of the voice transmission between the flight deck and mission control.

  Calmer now, O’Donnell imagined a picture he had seen countless times on television screens: Constellation arcing over the Atlantic Ocean in its “heads down” altitude, the burns of the two SRBs and the three SSMEs spewing out a combined pillar of fire, shrinking to a dollop of orange, and finally disappearing in the darkening blue of the sky. He was on top of that flame, his hands gripping armrests and a three-hundred-pound cinder block pressing squarely on his chest and those giants still shaking and pummeling him.

  He turned his head enough to see the portside monitor. The shuttle was some thirty miles above the Atlantic. The bright Florida sky had deepened to a fuzzy blue-black.

  Looks like I’m going to Trikon Station, O’Donnell thought optimistically. From sunny Cal to a metal booby hatch in low Earth orbit. He trembled inwardly, whether from anxiety or anticipation he could not tell.

  The g-forces abated appreciably. Williams spoke directly to the passengers on the middeck: “We are now in a low elliptical orbit. In approximately thirty-three minutes, we will have a second OMS burn to boost us into the same orbit as Trikon Station.”

  “Whoooweee!” Freddy Aviles howled.

  O’Donnell realized that his hands were floating free. He forced them back to his lap and curled his fingers under the strap of his safety harness. His head felt funny, stuffed, as if his sinuses were jammed full of cotton wadding.

  “Hey, Lance, this is something, ain’t it?” called Freddy. He sat immediately to O’Donnell’s left, but his voice sounded muffled through the congestion in O’Donnell’s head.

  Muncie groaned in response.

  “He doesn’t look so good,” said O’Donnell.

  “Lance? Nah. He the only one didn’ get sick on the Vomit Comet,” Freddy said. Nearly everybody had upchucked during the long series of parabolic maneuvers aboard the KC-135. The plane would dive and then nose up, giving the collection of fledgling space workers a few gut-wrenching moments of weightlessness before it dove again toward the lush green mat of central Florida.

  Freddy craned his neck to take a look at Muncie. “Hey, man, you okay?”

  “No. Terrible.”

  “Tha’s crazy, man. You got the strongest stomach I know, except for my cousin Felix. And tha’s because his wife can’t cook.”

  “Maybe it’s the excitement of being here for real,” O’Donnell suggested.

  Muncie started to shake his head. His face turned greenish.

  “Tha’s it,” Freddy agreed cheerfully. “Okay, Lance, I leave you alone.”

  O’Donnell didn’t feel so well himself. He attempted a few deep breaths, but found it impossible to fill his lungs. Loosening his harness did not help. He merely bobbed against the straps without any effect on his ability to breathe. Microgravity allowed his internal organs to shift upward, which seemed to restrict his lung capacity. He settled for concentrating on the clock, its LED digits moving in increasing speed from minutes to seconds to tenths of seconds to hundredths of seconds. In front of him, two Japanese technicians jabbered noisily. Behind him, an American technician and a Swedish scientist compared microgravity symptoms. The American complained of a severe headache and the Swede stated that she had trouble focusing on nearby objects.

  Just after the forty-five-minute mark, the commander announced: “We are now about twelve miles in front and slightly above Trikon Station. You’ll feel a few bumps and nudges as we use the RCS thrusters to kill off the drift rates and close in on the station. Then we’ll make a low-z translation for berthing.”

  O’Donnell remembered that the RCS engines were the reaction control system jets that were used to make small maneuvering corrections. But what a low-z translation might be was a mystery to him.

  The shuttle flew through night. The passengers ooohed and aaahed at the star-like patterns of city lights displayed on the portside monitor. Then came the real show—sunrise. It began with a faint rosy glow throwing the rim of the Earth into silhouette. Like a film run at fast speed, the glow boiled over the horizon, then separated into bands of brilliant colors—blues, reds, yellows, oranges. Finally came the golden bloom of the sun.

  “Approaching Trikon Station,” said Williams.

  “There it is,” said Freddy. “Looks like a giant silver diamond.”

  “Trikon Station,” Williams called. “This is Constellation. Preparing for berthing.”

  “Roger, Constellation,” spoke a voice from the station. “Damn happy to see you, too. That old bird never looked so beautiful.”

  The minutes inched by. The middeck passengers could hear Williams talking with the station, but it was all the clipped, incomprehensible jargon of professionals.

  Finally Williams said, “Okay, folks. We are now station-keeping—hanging just outside Trikon’s main docking port. They’re cranking up their RMS to latch onto us and pull us up to the port. We’ll be berthed in a couple of minutes.”

  O’Donnell pictured the spindly robot arm of the remote manipulator system reaching out to take the shuttle in its metal grip and slowly, gently bring it into contact with the airlock.

/>   He felt a small thump.

  “Bull’s-eye,” said the station voice.

  Duncan, the second pilot of the shuttle, floated down from the flight deck and squeezed past the passengers to enter the airlock and complete the mating of the two ports.

  Williams announced, “There will be a slight delay as we pressurize the connecting tunnel, check for leaks, and equalize pressure with Trikon. Might as well unstow your gear.”

  The passengers released themselves from their seat harnesses. In the cramped quarters of the middeck there was much bumping and banging, but eventually everyone managed to pull their flight bags out of the lockers. The shoulder straps were useless and wriggled like snakes until Freddy suggested wrapping them around the bag and holding the bag under the arm. The slight delay was much longer than Williams had predicted.

  “Like deplaning at LAX,” grumbled O’Donnell. He noticed that Muncie was still in his chair. Their eyes met momentarily. Muncie looked frightened, like a kid who had lost his mother in a crowded shopping mall. He closed his eyes tightly for a moment, as if trying to summon up whatever inner reserves of courage he had. Then Muncie unhooked his harness and eased himself afloat. He groped toward the lockers and did not seem to remember which one held his flight bag. When he finally located the locker, he fumbled with the latch until Freddy reached over to help.

  “Was stuck, eh?” said Freddy.

  “Yeah. Thanks.” Muncie pulled out the flight bag and wrapped the strap as the others had done.

  “Airlock is open,” said Freddy. He placed his hands on Muncie’s shoulders. “Man, you don’t look so good.”

  “I still feel lousy.”

  “Happens to the best of us.”

  “But this is happening to me.”

  “You’ll shake it.”

  O’Donnell followed as Freddy guided Muncie through the ribbed plastic tunnel connecting the shuttle’s docking adapter to the station’s airlock hatch. Floating awkwardly, bumping into one another, they entered the instrument-crammed command module, where a Trikon crewman hustled them through and out into the station’s connecting passageway. O’Donnell felt the amused attitude of the Trikon technicians on duty in the command module, the typical knowing smirk of veterans eyeing newly arrived rookies.