Trojan Orbit

by Mack Reynolds

  “Are you so sure he will?”

  He hesitated. “Perhaps it is a matter of time. Given sufficient time, I have no doubt but that a valid space colony can be built. But I am afraid that your publicity people have been a bit too—what is the Americanism—gung ho.”

  She looked over at him as they descended the steps. “How do you mean? Obviously, Ron Rich and his people get a little enthusiastic from time to time, but what’s that got to do with the eventual success of Island One and the islands to follow?”

  “Perhaps, Annette,” he said heavily, “you have spent so much time up here these last few years that you have gotten out of touch with reality Earthside.”

  She repeated still again, “How do you mean?”

  “There is still a great deal of enthusiasm on Earth for the L5 Project and billions are still being invested in the Lagrange Five Corporation, though as yet, of course, not a single dividend has been declared.”

  She said, a bit tartly, “Obviously, there is no income as yet. Only outgo. The SPS’s are as yet inoperative. When they get underway, LFC stock will be worth its weight in blue diamonds.”

  He nodded skeptically: “After the bugs have been eliminated. But the point I was making is that the investors Earthside have been led to believe that Island One is now all but completed and that final success is all but here. From everything I have thus far seen and heard, it isn’t. And I suspect that success, if ever it comes, will require many more years of arduous effort. Somewhere along here, disillusionment is fated to develop. And then, once again to use an Americanism, the fat will be in the fire.”

  They had reached the floor, one below the top, and Annette had led the way down the corridor to the office apportioned to the distinguished ecologist. She opened the door and let her companion pass through. A space coveralled worker was dusting the floor with a long-handled mop. Tall, blond, strikingly blue-eyed, Scandinavian in appearance, he bobbed his head awkwardly in greeting at their entrance.

  The secretary said, “Ah, Alvar. You aren’t through as yet?”

  His blue eyes took her in admiringly as he straightened up. “Almost, Doctor Casey,” he told her. “The place hasn’t been touched since Doctor Petersen’s accident.”

  Annette said, “Academician Leonard Suvorov, this is Alvar Saarinen. Alvar was brought up as a forestry authority, but since we aren’t as yet ready to utilize his expertise, he has been devoting his efforts to sanitary engineering.”

  Saarinen laughed humorlessly as he shook hands with the Russian. “That means janitor,” he said in Esperanto. “When I left Helsinki, I had no idea I would wind up sweeping floors.”

  The scientist nodded, only slightly set back. The Fatherland of the Proletariat the Soviet Complex might be, but an Academician of the Academy of Sciences in Leningrad did not usually shake hands with a janitor. It would seem the democracy reached its ultimate here in space.

  Suvorov looked about the large room approvingly. It seemed more a study than an office. The bookshelves extended from floor to ceiling and monopolized the walls. The furniture, though all metallic, was well done and cushioned and the desk was large and workmanlike, rather than ostentatious, such as that of Sol Ryan. There were several sets of steel files along the walls.

  He said to Annette, “Then this is the former office of my old colleague Nils Petersen? Excellent; I look forward to perusing his notes. It should save me considerable time. It is my honest opinion that it should have been Doctor Petersen who received the Nobel Prize with which I was honored.”

  She said, “Well, yes. The doctor’s death came as a great shock to all of us. The accident has yet to be explained. The blow to our ecology department was shattering. Thank heavens you’ve materialized in the nick of time.” Her mouth twisted. “To use the Americanism.”

  The academician blinked his weary eyes at her. “Aren’t you an American, my dear?”

  “Hell yes, to use the Americanism.”

  He chuckled, getting her dig at him, and went over to one of the bookshelves and scanned titles. “Ah, excellent,” he said. “Trust Nils.”

  She said, “I imagine that you’ll wish some time to get adjusted here. This afternoon I’ll take you over to the laboratories and introduce you to your fellow ecologists. There are only two offices here in the hotel devoted to your department.”

  He had drifted to a set of steel files and pulled open one of the drawers. It seemed empty. He pulled out another.

  He said, frowning, “And who is in the other office?”

  “It’s the one adjoining this. Professor Chu Sing was there.”

  “Ah, yes.” The second drawer was also empty. He pulled out a third. “I heard that the professor left, to my dismay.”

  “That’s right,” Annette said, almost apologetically. “He seemed a little short-tempered. He finally flew off the handle.”

  “To use the Americanism,” Suvorov murmured.

  She grinned and went on. “And returned to Earth. At first, Doctor Ryan had hopes that he’d reconsider and return. But then he was struck, by a taxi I think, in New York.”

  The Russian slammed shut the third drawer he had opened and said testily, “You seem to have a high mortality rate among your biologists. Where are the computer files and notes of Doctor Petersen?”

  “Why…I don’t know. Perhaps in his desk?”

  “I’d think they would be more extensive than that. How long was he here in all?”

  “The better part of a year.”

  The academician sat at the desk and opened all the closed drawers. “This desk has been cleared out,” he said in disgust.

  “Ill check,” she said. “Probably, knowing that you were taking over, someone has removed all the documents of the doctor and stored them elsewhere.”

  “Please do,” he said. “It is quite important, if he devoted his considerable genius to creating a viable closed-cycle ecology system here in Island One for a full year. His notes will undoubtedly save me many a day’s work which I would otherwise expend duplicating his experiments. It is especially important in view of the fact that Professor Chu has also departed the scene.”

  She said, frowning, “But wouldn’t his notes all be in Norwegian? Perhaps we can find a translator to.…”

  “My dear Doctor Casey, I am thoroughly acquainted with the Scandinavian tongues.”

  She blinked, but then looked at her wrist chronometer and said, “I have an, uh, appointment with Bruce Carter. Suppose you take over here, Leon, and I’ll check with you later on going to the laboratories and meeting those who will be working under you.”

  He grunted at that, even as he continued to investigate the desk. “I’ve already met some of them,” he rumbled. “It’s a tragedy that Petersen and Chu aren’t still with us.”

  Annette left and the academician slumped back in his chair. He looked at Alvar Saarinen, who was still pushing his dust mop about the floor.

  “Aren’t you through yet?” the Russian said ungraciously.

  The other straightened and put his forefinger to his lips in the universal gesture signifying silence. Suvorov stared at him in lack of comprehension. The Finnish janitor leaned his mop against a chair and approached the desk. He took up a stylo, drew a small piece of paper toward him, and wrote a single word on it. And then, with the scientist still staring at him, went over to one of the office’s windows and opened it. He turned and gestured to Suvorov to join him. Mystified, the Russian obeyed.

  Alvar Saarinen leaned out the window slightly and held up the paper so that Leonard Suvorov could see what he had written. It read CHEKA.

  The janitor said in a whisper, “Softly; the office is electronically monitored.”

  The other was still staring. He whispered back, “Then you are my contact with Colonel Vladimir Dzhurayev? How in the name of Hades did you manage to infiltrate this citadel of the Lagrange Five Project?”

  The other put the piece of paper in his mouth and, very serious of face, chewed and swallowed. He whispered
, “It was not overly difficult, in view of the fact that I have had plenty of time. I am what is called a mole. I have been placed without knowledge of what my eventual use might be. Perhaps I will not be called upon for some special duty for years—if ever. But I remain available just in case. Comrade Colonel Dzhurayev has informed me that I am at your disposal, though it is unlikely that you will need me. Have you any questions? Keep your voice very low.”

  “Why is my office monitored?”

  “I don’t know, but they all are. So are all of the hotel rooms. Surveillance is remarkably complete. Anything else?”

  “Where are Nils Petersen’s notes?”

  “Two of Al Moore’s goons came and got them this morning. I have no idea where they took them.”

  “Who is Al Moore?”

  “Alfred Moore is the Security Commissioner.”

  “Police? You mean that they have police up here?”

  The Finn looked cynical. “Per capita, we have more police in Island One than the KGB has at home. It is they who have placed the electronic bugs everywhere. Anything else?”

  “No…not for the time being. Perhaps I will think of questions to ask you later. How do I make contact with you?”

  “I will come here to your office every day shortly before noon, ostensibly to clean up. If you have any messages to relay to the Comrade Colonel, I will take care of it.”

  “I doubt if I will have. I am afraid that I am inexperienced in the field of espionage. Besides, it is not my primary task.”

  The other nodded and, without further words, turned, regained his mop, and shambled out into the corridor to take up his janitorial duties.

  Suvorov looked after him for a moment, then shook his head and resumed his exploration of his new quarters. Examining the balance of the drawers in the files and desk, he found not a scrap of evidence that the ecologist Nils Petersen had ever worked here. He had a deep-rooted suspicion that Annette Casey would not be able to discover what had happened to the papers. Why, he couldn’t imagine, but the suspicion was there.

  There were two doors besides that which led into the hotel. He tried one and found it opened into a small bathroom. The other, also unlocked, led into an office almost identical to his own. That of Professor Chu Sing, the high-strung Chinese scholar? He entered and looked about. On the desk there were still piles of papers, graphs, sketches, notes. The thick eyebrows of Leonard Suvorov went up. He shuffled among them for a few minutes, his face going increasingly serious. All the writing was in Mandarin.

  Thoughtfully, he turned and approached one of the steel files. It was full of the Chinese ecologist’s work. All in Mandarin, the scholastic universal language of China. He took his time going through this file and then the others. From time to time he removed single sheets of paper, sometimes a sheaf of them.

  The hobby of Academician Leonard Suvorov was linguistics. Since boyhood he had found his relaxation from his scientific studies in the acquiring of ever more tongues. As an undergraduate, he had studied English, German, and French as a matter of course. But then his hobby took over from duty and he found that with one Latin language, French, the acquiring of Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and even Rumanian were simple matters. German led him to both Holland Dutch and Flemish, and then to Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian. He was frustrated to find no relationship between the Scandinavian and Finnish and launched himself into the conquest of that strange language, unrelated to any other European other than Estonian and Hungarian, since all had originally come from far Central Asia. Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian dispensed with, he turned to still more exotic challenges and became one of the few students of language to become proficient in Basque, a language related to none other on Earth and seldom mastered by anyone not born into the ancient tongue. Indeed, he had conceived a theory, which he never surfaced, not wishing to face ridicule, that Basque was descended from the language of Cro-Magnon man, whose cave art was still to be found in Southern France and Northern Spain, now the home of the volatile Basque people.

  He gathered together his selection of Professor Chu Sing’s months of work and returned with them to his own office. He decided, with inner satisfaction, that the goons of Al Moore, as the Cheka mole Saarinen had called them, would never suspect that the Russian academician, Leonard Suvorov, had extended his hobby to the Orient, after having mastered every language of Europe.

  In short, Leonard Suvorov was thoroughly conversant with Mandarin. He sat at his desk and began perusing his finds. And as he read, his face became increasingly expressionless. When he had finished, some two hours later, he came to his feet, gathered up the notes, and returned to the Chinese scholar’s office. He took great care in returning the papers to the exact place each had been found. Then he returned to his own office, sat at his desk, and looked unseeingly through a window that opened out on a long view of the cylinder that was Island One.

  He said aloud, “I should have suggested to Doctor Ryan fifty, rather than twenty years, before this project should have been undertaken.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “I regard Space Colonies as another pathological manifestation of the culture that has spent all its resources on expanding the nuclear means for exterminating the human race. Such proposals are only technological requisites for infantile fantasies.”

  —Lewis Mumford, author of

  Technics and Civilization,

  The Story of Utopia, etc.

  *

  Rick Venner, immaculately dressed in an Earthside business suit, smiled across the table at Mary Beth Houston. They were having lunch in the main dining room of the Lagrange Five Hilton.

  The waitress came up smiling, no menus in hand. She said, “Good afternoon, Ms. Houston. I hope that you are enjoying your visit.”

  “Oh, yes,” Mary Beth said.

  The waitress said to Rick, “My name’s Irene, sir. I don’t believe I’ve waited on you before.”

  He turned on his charm. “You’ll be seeing more of me, Irene. Rick Venner. One of the new engineers. I came up with the Prince.”

  “Oh yes, of course. Now let’s see. I hope you two have good appetites today. To begin with, the gazpacho soup?”

  “From Andalusia, Spain,” Rick told her. “It’s a cold soup made of oil, vinegar, tomatoes, onions and garlic, with side dishes of fresh chopped green peppers, cucumbers, onions, and croutons of fried bread available to be sprinkled on it. It’s really quite good when done correctly.” He smiled up at Irene. “And I’m sure that the chef here is an artist.”

  “Oh, yes, sir.”

  “Well,” Mary Beth said. “I’ve never even heard of cold soup. And I don’t like garlic, but I’ll try anything once.”

  “Two,” Rick said smiling at the waitress.

  “And then,” Irene said, “we are especially recommending the Dover Sole. Antoine is quite enthused about it. He claims it is the best sole that he has seen since the Savoy in London.”

  “The Savoy is rightfully famed for its fish, Mary Beth,” Rick told her.

  “Actually, I was thinking about a steak and french fries,” she said doubtfully. “I like fried catfish, but I’m not really much for fish.”

  Irene said, “Antoine does a wonderful filet mignon with Béarnaise sauce.”

  “The sole for me,” Rick said.

  “Oh, then I’ll have it too,” Mary Beth said. “I really should try more things when I’m in restaurants. I always order the same thing over and over. It’s hard to miss on steak and potatoes in a good place.”

  “A tossed salad with, say, a Roquefort dressing?” Irene suggested.

  “Of course,” Rick said.

  “And a Riesling? The wine steward tells me that he has just received a shipment of Nachenheimer that is excellent.”

  “Fine,” Rick said. “Should go wonderfully with the sole.”

  When the girl was gone, Rick smiled at Mary Beth across from him. “On the swank side for a space colony, wouldn’t you say? That “no menu” routine is really put
ting on the dog.”

  “Well, yes,” she said. “Oh, it’s very nice, of course, but I didn’t really expect so many imported things. I thought there’d probably be fresh fish, out of the island streams, and, of course, lots of fresh vegetables and fruits, and possibly some ordinary wine, like California wine, and all, or maybe beer brewed right here in the island. But this is so fancy.”

  Rick broke a bread stick and dabbed some butter on it. “I suppose it’s a matter of good public relations, Mary Beth. It wouldn’t do for a visiting Prince, for instance, to be presented with hamburgers and home brew.”

  “No,” she said hesitantly. “I suppose not. And all the people here at the hotel are VIPs or top-notch scientists and everything. All except me. But, well, good gracious, I kind of get the feeling that I’m not seeing the real Island One at all.”

  “How do you mean?” Rick said sympathetically.

  “I don’t know. When I go back and have to tell everybody at the Friends of Lagrange Five what it was like, all I’ll be able to tell them will be about the hydroponic gardens and the air plant and the recycling works and the hotel here. And, well, of course, I had my ride in the space taxi to where they’re building the SPSs and that was thrilling, of course. All the men in space suits, out there working on it.” She frowned. “But it wasn’t nearly through yet, I don’t think. And I got the impression, down Earthside, that it was just about to go into operation.”

  “Space taxi?” Rick asked.

  She shrugged her somewhat bony shoulders and giggled. “That’s kind of a joke they have, I guess. They’re little four-place spacecraft and go squirting around just anywhere. Carl even let me handle the controls for a while. There’s really nothing to it, but it’s very exciting. Imagine, me driving a spacecraft all around.”

  “Carl?” Rick said.

  They waited for a moment while Irene served them their Andalusian cold soup and the liveried wine steward brought an ice bucket complete with long, green Germanic wine bottle and dark red goblets. He politely showed Rick the label before popping the cork. Rick pursed his lips in appreciation at the vintage date and the vineyard. On the face of it, the L5 Hilton served nothing but the best.