by ASF
He almost welcomed the familiarity of her emotionless tone, her lifeless face. “I’m just trying to understand them, ma’am.” He felt like a child standing before her judgment.
“Unacceptable. You will communicate with no one.”
“You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to keep me quiet. What are you trying to hide?”
She sighed, a rasping groan from her lungs. “They are dangerous.”
He nodded involuntarily. They very well might be. But how did she know that? How did she know that the craft was a manned shuttle? Or that they were planning to land? “You’ve been in communication with the Earth ship.” It was an accusation, not a question.
She stared long and hard. The fire in her eyes faded. A slow, stiff nod confirmed his suspicions. “The Secretary-General has been negotiating with their leaders. They won’t listen to reason.”
“You hid it from us. All this time you knew they were coming, what they intended, and you kept us in the dark.” The realization struck Ari square in the chest—he knew more than was good for him. “And just what is my mission?” His voice quivered.
“We cannot allow them to contaminate the ecosystem. I am truly sorry.”
“You uploaded a virus with your data packet. Took over control of my magsails.” A glance at the HUD overlay showed the orbits still intersecting, despite the Earth shuttle’s evasive maneuvers. Even a light craft like the skimmer—maybe 150 kilos of man and support frame—became a deadly projectile at orbital speed. He would do significant damage to the Earth shuttle, if not turn it to slag.
She sat motionless for an eternity, while Ari waited to hear his death sentence. The oxygen-use telltale flashed yellow in his faceplate, and he realized that he was breathing fast and hard. Finally she spoke. “So many sacrifices.”
So that’s it. “Let me talk to Maura. You owe me at least that much.”
Her head moved sluggishly from side to side. “I can’t allow you to communicate with anyone on the ship. I’ll relay a message for you.”
“No, thanks.”
“Who is your gestational mother, young man?”
“You are.”
Her gaze wavered for just a moment. “Oh. There have been so many.” Her eyes no longer focused on Ari, but on the distant past behind him.
He broke contact, allowing his silence to speak for him. Her image winked out, leaving him with nothing but the drumbeat of his pulse in his ears. The stars ahead, just above the horizon line, wavered with atmospheric distortion. The living landscape below slid past him as he drifted inexorably toward extinction. What price is too high to preserve an entire ecosystem? The Director had made her answer clear.
“Uh, Ari?” He jerked to attention at the sound of the Earthman’s voice in his helmet. “You mind shifting course away from us?”
Damn. “Um, yeah. I have a real problem here. You need to abort your landing. Head back to your ship.”
“No can do. Orders and all that.”
“Listen. The Secretary-General is serious about this. If you try to land, we’re going to be orbital debris.”
“Aw, hell. Why would you want to do that?”
“She’s using me as a guided missile and I can’t do a damn thing about it.”
“This thing steers like a pig, son. Even if I started a burn right now, you’d be here before I broke orbit.”
“I don’t think we’re going to live through this.”
There was a long silence. Finally, Bill’s voice came through soft and gentle. “You may not. I have orders to blast you out of the sky if need be.” They brought weapons. For a brief moment, the thought was more disturbing than Ari’s own impending death.
He wondered what kind of weapons they had. Projectile launchers, laser weapons, particle beams? His gaze dropped to the living world below and he wondered how they might devastate the pristine ecosystem. We spent our lives worried about the consequences of a single microorganism wreaking havoc. What about a swarm of armed Earthmen?
But what about his own people—his own gestational mother—only too willing to kill for a planet they’d never even touched?
He was dropping low over Nouvelle Terre’s pole, heading for perigee near the equator. His HUD showed the magsail maneuvering loops pulsing with current, pushing against the planet’s intense magnetic field to shift his orbit. Adjusting to the Earth shuttle’s maneuvers. He tried in vain to crank up the current in the main thrusting loop to increase his speed and push himself into a higher orbit. Perigee kick. The nanoprocessor refused his commands. If only he had some way to adjust the magnetic fields.
Particle beams.
He inhaled sharply at the idea. He just might live through this after all. But the Earthmen would live too, and they’d surely land. What cost is too high?
“You there, Bill?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“How long do I have?”
“We’ll have to hit you as soon as we have line of sight. Even so, dodging the debris will be dicey.”
“I need to know why.”
“Why what?”
“You have to know that landing on the surface will do immeasurable damage. Even if you don’t harm the ecology directly, you’ll destroy the opportunity to study it. It’ll be contaminated, and we’ll never know what it was like before. Why would you do that?”
Ari heard an exhaled sigh. “Hell, kid, no one wants to despoil your world. We’re just looking for a new home. You know, a place to raise children without fear of pollution or fallout.”
“But you don’t know how Earth life will interact with the life down there.” He swept his arm across the expanse of the world below him as though Bill could see him. “We’ll never get another chance to study the ecosystem in its natural state.”
“I’m not here to debate philosophy with you, son. All I know is that we need a place to live. Think how much more we can learn by getting up close and personal with the life down there.”
“We already know a lot. We . . .” And what do we know, really? We’ve been here for a generation. “We know how the pseudoplants down there do photosynthesis. We know they use something called pyranosyl-RNA for their genes. We know . . . we know a lot. I’m not a scientist.” His words didn’t sound convincing, even to his own ears.
There was a long pause. “You’re going to be coming over the horizon soon and I’m going to have to . . .” His voice caught, as though unwilling to say the words. “I’m gonna have to do something I don’t want to do.”
“Can you hit me with a beam of charged particles?” He hadn’t realized he was going to say it until the words came out. His heart pulsed in his ears.
“Uh, yeah, I’m sure we could rig something, but why—oh, I get it. The beam will push against your magsail and deflect your path, almost like a particle beam launch system. Brilliant. But the radiation would fry you.”
“It would fry an Earthman. Maybe not me.”
Ari heard Bill whistle loud and low. “You have balls of steel, kid.”
“One more thing. My ship’s blocking my transmissions. There’s someone I’d like to talk to before this goes down.”
“No problem.” Ari could practically hear him grin. “I can punch a signal through anything they’ve got.”
Nothing to do but wait and wonder. He looked down at the deep blue ocean below him and was rewarded with a flood of guilt. Is my life really worth the risk to the planet? Risk versus reward. On the surface, they could learn in a year more than we’ve learned in a generation.
“Okay, Ari.” Bill’s voice startled him. “I’ll relay your signal with a little bit of a kick. It’ll get through. Transmit whenever you’re ready.”
He switched to Maura’s comm channel. “Are you there, Maura?”
Her face appeared on his faceplate, grainy and pixelated. “Ari? Are you all right?” As she spoke, her image froze, then jumped once again to real time.
“I think so.” He knew she’d hear the lie in his voice, so he didn’t wai
t for her to call him on it. “I have a bit of a problem. I’m going to be taking a few rads out here. I need to know how much is too much.”
Her voiced tensed. “How much? How fast?”
“Bill? You listening in?”
“I’m here, son. We’re getting the particle beam set up now. We’re going to have to wait until you come over the horizon, so you’ll be damn close. We’ll have to give you a pretty big dose to deflect you enough. Call it eight to ten Sieverts.”
Maura’s image froze again, this time with eyebrows knotted in concern. “I don’t know,” her voice said from the still image. “That’s cutting it close, especially since it’s going to come over a short period of time. Androstenediol isn’t immunity, it just helps you keep your blood and marrow cell counts up.” His faceplate jumped to a moving image, still wearing the same furrowed brow. “You’re going to get sick, at the very least. Ari . . .” Her voice wavered.
Ari choked back tears. “Hey, I’ll be fine. You know me; I’m too insolent to die when I’m told to.”
She exhaled a tiny laugh.
Bill’s voice spoke in his ear, gentle and soft. “I just activated the particle beam. You should see a change in your orbit soon.”
Ari waited for—what? Pain? Tingling? He felt nothing. He activated the HUD’s graphics overlay. His projected orbit shifted to the right as he watched. Thrust is perpendicular to the beam path.
Would it be enough?
The orbits still passed so close they appeared to overlap. The Earth shuttle was approaching fast, but he still couldn’t find it with his naked eye.
“Ari.” Maura’s voice in his ear was husky with emotion. “If you don’t make it—”
“I will.” But the lines still intersect.
Her image nodded, jerky and pixelated.
Bill’s voice cut in, tense. “I’m not sure about this.”
Ari thought he saw a light behind Maura’s ghostly image, low on the horizon line. A star?
Before he could be sure, it brightened and was gone.
The HUD showed that he’d crossed the Earth shuttle’s orbit. He realized that he’d been holding his breath. He blew it out in a blast of air against his faceplate.
“Woo-hoo! That was close!” The tension was gone from Bill’s voice. “Your heart in your throat, kid?”
Ari nodded. He can’t see you. “It’s still beating, so it’s all good.”
“True enough.”
It occurred to Ari that Bill hadn’t been sure they were going to miss. He’d risked his life for Ari. “You should have shot me down,” he said. “Why didn’t you?”
“Hell, I’m no killer, son. Not if I can avoid it.” He paused a long moment, then added, “You’re not the only one who can disobey orders. Looks like we’re both going to catch some hell.”
“Your leaders should go easy on you. At least they’ll get the landing they wanted.”
“Maybe. All this maneuvering has my orbit fouled up. I don’t think I can make a safe approach to the landing zone. I’m going to have to abort.”
Ari’s eyes went wide. “You’re lying.”
“Hey, a pilot has to make judgment calls. By the time the inquiry is done, word of this incident will have spread. Everyone on this shuttle knows what happened here. Your girl back on your ship knows. It’s hard to keep information bottled up.”
“You’re taking a big risk,” Ari said. “Why?”
“You seemed to think it was important. And everyone else seemed willing to kill over it. I just figured someone more important than me should make the call. Let our leaders talk it out with yours. I think they’ll be more willing to come up with a solution with their people screaming in their ears.”
Ari caught himself nodding again. “Sounds like a plan.”
“You’d better get your ship to send a rescue party. You’re going to need medical attention. Soon.”
“Rescue mission’s already scrambling,” Maura said. “They’re going to bring you directly to the decontamination lock.”
Decontamination. Ari chuckled. Maura’s image looked at him questioningly. “It occurred to me that no amount of decontamination is going to stop what’s coming.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Earth people,” he said. “They’re so different, Maura. Almost as different as the life down on the surface. I wonder if we should be worried about another kind of contamination.”
“We’ll adapt,” Maura said. “We’ll have to.”
Will the same hold true when Earth life finally meets alien ecology? Ari wasn’t the man to answer that question. Maybe no one was qualified.
But they’d find out. Soon enough.
Copyright © 2010 Jay Werkheiser
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Short Stories
The Deadliest Moop
Sometimes it’s obvious that there’s a problem, but not how big it is. . . .
Michael A. Armstrong
They’d been about to power down for the day when dumbass Sven pulled in the squid.
The Anna Marie had been dragging the high orbits, 100,000 klicks up, working the fringe because Cap had gotten nervous going any shallower. Ian had thought him a pansy-ass until the Carly Renee doing a 75k pass took an old Soviet spy satellite right across the beam and blew up. Cap might be a schmuck, but his hunches paid off—good or bad—and he ran a slick tiller, too.
Besides, Ian had to admit, it was Cap’s crabber. His call.
They’d been pulling in good sets the past week, the pots catching lots of debris, most of it crap, but sometimes you got decent stuff—a few artifacts there, maybe some high-grade metal here.
Asshole that he was, Captain could guide a crabber neat and smooth in a high-velocity orbit, easing the Anna Marie right up to a patch of moop—material out of place, but wasn’t that everything?—and throw out the pots just right so they’d scoop it up without shredding them. Some crabbers liked to take debris straight into the hold, but Cap said some crabbers liked to die, too. He’d used pots, always used pots, and if a chunk came in too fast, you’d lose a big cage of high-density, photodegradable plastic and not your dang ship.
Cap might run the ship, but Ian ran the deck, he and Todd on the grapples, Sheila on the boom crane, and newbie Sven there in the sorting belt. Guy had an eye for stuff, Ian thought, and could flick through moop as fast as it came in, and not even miss a shiny. Sometimes new guys worked out okay from the start.
You had to move fast on deck, out in that big steel cage fifty meters long and twenty-five meters square. Rack ’em and stack ’em, that was the trick. Ian and Todd pulled in the pots with the grappling hooks, big harpoons on steel cables, Ian on the dorsal and Todd on the pectoral. You shot the hooks, hoped they caught because you only had one pass, and started reeling in the pot as soon as the baby caught. Cap stood there behind an observation port, counting pots and making sure they didn’t miss a set.
“What good does it do cleaning up orbits if you add to the moop?” Cap always said. Ian knew better than to point out the pots would turn to plastic dust inside of a year. Cap didn’t always like to hear logic. Pots cost money, anyway.
Sheila pulled in the pots with the boom crane and damn, that lady had a smooth touch. The pots came in with a little momentum—too fast and you’d ram it right through the port and wouldn’t Cap like that? Shelia had to slow the pots down and slide them into the bay, rack ’em and stack ’em, oh yeah, baby. Once the pots got racked, poor old Sven had to dump them and sort them. Rack ’em, stack ’em, dump ’em, sort ’em, that was the drill.
Todd had just grabbed his last pot and Ian was passing his set on to Sheila. Ian had gone on private comm to Todd trying to figure out if they should go help Sven sort or just let him sweat, but Sheila caught on to them—she couldn’t read lips, but she saw them talking—and shook her head and held up five fingers. Yeah, Sven had to come in on five, he’d been in his Deimos suit too long, they all had, but Sven w
as at the stern closest to the sun and catching most of the rays. Give the guy a hand, she meant and didn’t have to say it.
“I got me something,” Sven said over the loud hail. “It ain’t aright.”
They’d remember that phrase later, up before the tribunal. Ain’t aright.
The Anna Marie had left the Lagranges six weeks ago, out to fish a big gnarly patch of moop 100k up from earth. Cap liked to say he’d been in it since the first lottery, when the old freighters hauling nickel ore from the asteroids first came back to earth orbit and found damn near every high-altitude satellite blown up by photodegradable-plastic cluster bombs.
Everyone blamed the Chinese, but no one could pin it on them, not enough to start a hot war. Crabbers liked to talk about a secret bonus if anyone ever hauled in a smoking gun, something to nail the Chinese and get the Nations pissed off enough to stop the Chinos once and for all. But that was just crabber talk, really. Funny how that worked out anyway, Ian thought. Real funny. The Nations ponied up the bucks to hire the crabbers to clean the debris, and what with tariffs on the Chinese and all, huh, the Chinos paid most of it, so it all worked out anyway.
Truth was, Cap came in on the second lottery, after a dozen freighters kinda missed the learning curve and became one with the moop. Plus, well, the Anna Marie had been a hog anyway, and though Cap wouldn’t say it, the reason he’d never won the first lottery was, well, because the old girl hadn’t arrived quite in time for it.
Sometimes late was better than first, particularly when first meant never. Boom.
The Nations paid good money to clear the orbits. With five-hundred-million tonnes of shredded moop whipping around Earth, most of it no bigger than a half meter, hardly anyone wanted to risk coming up out of gravity. You could send out a robot freighter and cross your fingers, but living cargo? Leave it to the military jocks.
Until then, no one had figured out how to make space habitats profitable, and who wanted to live in a pressurized can when you could set your foot on solid earth—or Luna? Even a cold-ass, dark corner of Antarctica beat out space. Air, water, gravity: there was a lot to like about that, even at eighty below.