Forbidden The Stars

by Valmore Daniels

  “Appropriate.” For a few moments, Michael considered. “Well, traditionally, the discoverer of an element has the honor of naming it. Since those discoverers are not with us, then I think the task would have to fall to the theorists who first identified and classified the element. In honor of the Manez’s, we could call the anti-reaction ‘the Manez Effect.’ For the element itself, ‘Kinemet’ it is, and I will make a memo of it.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Michael waved his hand at him. “How do we find more of this Kinemet?”

  “Well, the most obvious, though hardly the most reliable, method, is to look for anomalies in the masses of charted asteroids when compared to their volumes. Anything that throws the specific gravity of an asteroid to above, say, ten or fifteen—depending on how stringent we want to get—then we give it a closer look. A specific gravity of seven is what we have found as the median of the asteroids in our catalog, with fluctuations between about four and twelve with those rich in heavy metals. But with Macklin’s Rock, we’ve calculated, based on composition and size, and preliminary mass readings without the space tugs, that it had an overall specific gravity of forty-eight.”

  “Forty-eight?” Michael could not believe that.

  “Yeah. That throws the estimated mass of Macklin’s Rock up to over sixty-eight thousand teratons. Based on that, there must be a number of pockets extant. Only problem with Macklin’s Rock is that it’s about six billion kilometers away.”

  “Have you told anybody about this? About the theory?”

  “No. When we contacted NASA and went through the SMD mine catalog, we found a number of asteroids with similar anomalies, summarily dismissed as faulty data. We’d like you to propose a follow-up survey to these asteroids.”

  “Of course. As soon as you give me the mine numbers and the vacuum drill, I’ll have a survey team there ready to dig. We’ll postpone informing NASA until we have some evidence; then they can go through their catalog and try mining their asteroids.”

  The director took in a deep breath.

  “So, then, if this is all true, we have to ask ourselves one question…and while we’re discussing impossible theories and new rules of the Laws of Physics, I think I know the answer to my own question.”

  “What’s the question?” Calbert urged.

  “Why did Macklin’s Rock stop? What acted as a dampening rod to stop the luminous reactions?”

  The men gathered in the room were, by nature, the best physics theorists Quantum Resources could hire. They did not waste time in stunned silence pondering a question that had not yet occurred to them.

  Immediately, Peter suggested, “Dis Pater?”

  Michael shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think Dis Pater is nothing more than an indicator, a gauge to measure estimated times of arrival, put there by another space-faring race—whether for our benefit or theirs, that is yet to be determined…

  “No, something else stopped the Rock from hurtling out into interstellar space, and I want you to include this possibility in your report.”

  The scientists in the room pondered for a few moments before Michael supplied his supposition.

  “I think, somehow, Alex stopped it.”

  __________

  Luna Station :

  Luna :

  Once the pirate ship reached docking port at Luna Station, Alex was summoned to the bridge, escorted by First Mate Chung.

  He had been keeping his mental eye on the ship’s approach, reveling in the sites that seemed so much more exhilarating than pictures on a holovid; there were not many people who could claim first-hand eyewitness to the docking of a space ship.

  At first, he wondered how they had managed to negotiate their landing without the docking governor informing the authorities of the nature of the ship, but then, Alex realized the governor was just a computer that carried out instructions. Whoever programmed the governor was probably in the pay of the pirates, or the pirates’ masters.

  On the bridge, Alex faced Captain Gruber for the first time since being brought on board. The bridge, although Alex had surveyed it with his clairvoyance, seemed more ominous and foreboding in person, mostly because the command crew were consciously ignoring him, and the captain was glaring at him as if deciding whether to chew him up, or skin him alive.

  Trying to avoid making eye contact under the captain’s glare, Alex flicked his gaze over the DMRs and stat monitors.

  As far as he could tell, most of the controls and stations were identical in function and presence as onboard the Orcus 1.

  On the Orcus 1, Alex had studied each station and its purpose, and was confident that he could identify them on the pirate ship’s bridge—or any other space vessel, for that matter.

  “Alex,” Captain Gruber’s voice grated in dire warning.

  Alex snapped his attention back to the command chair, though did not lift his eyes to the occupant.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “We are going to depart the ship now, you and I. I’m going to be taking you through the port where there will undoubtedly be other people. You might think about running, or shouting for help, or something equally stupid.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Gruber shook his head. “I advise you against it. I could threaten to kill you, but our client has expressly forbidden that kind of action. However, he said nothing about killing civilians.” He pulled out a lasrod; it looked lethal. “If you run from me, I will shoot one person at random until you return. If you shout at someone to help you, I will shoot that someone. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

  Alex’s eyes narrowed. He knew now that these were true pirates, callous and mean. The Doc might be something of an anomaly, but that might have something to do with the fact that he was a doctor, trained to save lives; he had still thrown in with these brigands. Alex suddenly hated every one of them.

  He would go along complacently, and not try to escape. He would not, however, fully cooperate if he could help it. He had been on the verge of spilling his secrets to the Doc, explaining about the clairvoyance, and about the other thing.

  A few days before, in his weekly allocated shower, Alex noticed a small clump of hair clogging the drain. When he pulled the hair out of the gap, he was shocked to realize it was his own. Since then, he had found strands of his hair everywhere. He was a ten-year-old who was slowly going bald.

  As alarmed as he was by this revelation, he knew he had been wise to keep his mouth shut. The less information the doctor had, the better.

  “I said, do I make myself clear?” Gruber repeated in a tone that brooked no disobedience.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Going along with the captain would not only provide for the safety of innocent bystanders, but would allow Alex to see for himself who had contracted their services; if he ever got away, he could report the man behind the kidnapping, with a full description.

  “I won’t try anything,” Alex assured the captain.

  “Good.” Gruber holstered the rod. “First Mate Chung and the Doc will accompany us. I don’t want to hear a word from you for any reason from now on, got that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Gruber’s eyes turned hard. “What was that?” he demanded in a growl, his teeth grinding together.

  “Y—” Alex stopped himself from speaking another word, held himself still.

  “That’s better,” Gruber said. “Let’s go.”

  __________

  Luna Station :

  Luna :

  The bartender gave her patron a confused glance when she ordered an iced tea, no ice. Justine was more than accustomed to people blinking at her request in restaurants. Iced tea went down better when it was warm.

  The lounge was full, every chair taken, so Justine nursed her drink as she slowly neared the observational domed windows. She was wearing a Lunar vest, the fabric lined with metal shavings that increased her apparent gravity by a factor of six; large magnagrays had been installed in the foundation of Lunar station
to help counteract the effects of long-term exposure to light gravity on the moon. Weightlessness and near-weightlessness over time caused bone deterioration, calcium deficiency, and muscular atrophy, among other things, in many people.

  Free-fall had many benefits that balanced the dangers, but with Luna established as a base of commerce, every precaution was taken to provide an Earth-like environment, to minimize any dangers.

  The antigravs on a ship could not be used on the moon; the expense was far too great.

  Justine passed by a few people she knew, nodded or exchanged pleasantries, but quickly moved on. Hoping to catch a glimpse of Earth from the radiation-shield window, she was disappointed. A small digital counter on a support beam indicated it was three hours to Earthdawn.

  Because of the moon’s synchronous rotation, the Near Side always faced Earth, and the Far Side always faced away; however, there was a slight variation in its orbit of five degrees. These variations, called librations, allowed the Earth-view terminator—the line that separated the near and far sides of the moon—to fluctuate.

  It was in the median of that fluctuation that Luna Station had been erected.

  The reason for this was as a compromise between astronomers, who wished an unadulterated view of the sky; and the United Earth Corporate Council merchant traders, who, it was found, were psychologically ill-at-ease conducting business out of sight of the Earth.

  A Lunar “day” was about two weeks in length. Currently, the sun was in the northern Lunar hemisphere, shining brightly as it did for fourteen days straight out of every twenty-seven-and-a-third days, though this did not affect the apparent color of the sky from Luna Station. The moon had no atmosphere, no molecules of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, water vapor and other trace elements and particles for the sun’s light to catch and scatter in the many shades of orange, purple, and blue that bespectacled the Terran firmament.

  Justine sighed, and took a sip of her iced tea. She had spent the last two days since landing on the moon doing nothing but going over and filing paperwork and reports. The liaison from NASA demanded much of her time; each of the crew had been segregated with their respective agencies and departments. They had had no contact with one another.

  The little spare time Justine found, she used to avoid all the bureaucrats and functionaries who descended upon her relentlessly; as well as the media who pursued her like sharks to blood.

  The news of Alex’s kidnapping, and of Macklin’s Rock, still hadn’t reached any public channels, although the NASA attaché had informed her that the country corp. governments who had participated in the Orcus project where well apprised of the situation.

  The media wanted a quip on Dis Pater. What did she think it was? they asked her relentlessly. Did aliens put it there? For what purpose? Did she think aliens would be arriving soon? Did she think they looked like the popular representations in the holovids? Did she think the aliens would want to have sex with her? And on and on, each question more ludicrous than the last.

  She hated the media, and what they stood for. Vultures, all of them. They made her want to scramble back to the refuge of the humorless bureaucratic monotony.

  In a way, though, she was glad she had things to occupy her mind. Otherwise, she might sink into a morass of guilt over having failed to bring Alex home safely. The kid had gone through more than most adults, and had bore up considerably well, even though he had not been offered any comfort from Justine or any of the other crew: their lives were based on science, not sociology.

  She glanced at a chronometer, remembering that she had another meeting in a few minutes, and set down her empty glass for the servobots to fetch, and made her way out of the lounge.

  Traversing the warren of halls and corridors, her keen sense of location kept her from losing her way. Her mind tended to wander in an attempt to try to forestall thoughts of the upcoming meeting, but her alertness sharpened when, out of her periphery, she thought she spotted a familiar form.

  She turned her head to see the backs of three men and a boy rounding a corner. They were gone too quickly for her to be certain. What made her think it had been Alex? The thought was ludicrous. Alex could be halfway across the solar system for all she knew. Stopping, she debated with herself for a few precious seconds. The attaché would be uncompromisingly furious.

  “Ah, they can start without me.” Her curiosity had to be satisfied.

  She quickly backtracked to the public corridor where the four had entered, and squinted her eyes to scan down its length.

  The four must have gone off on a side corridor. Justine stepped up her pace to try to catch up.

  At every intersection, she looked one way and then the other. At the third cusp, she thought she spotted a recognizable jacket, and hurried, jogging.

  By the time she reached the elbow of the corridor, the forms were disappearing again behind yet another corner. At the last second, one of the men glanced behind him, and Justine got a brief look at an oriental man. He did not see her.

  Throwing caution to the wind, she broke into a run, but when she rounded the corner, the four had disappeared from sight down a long passage decorated with red trim near the ceiling junction. There were two guards barring her way. She glanced at the map on the wall.

  She was at the People’s Republic of China section of Luna Station. Whereas most country corporations allowed free passage to anyone, practically inviting them to visit their PR information booths and facilities, it was still each country corporation’s right to privacy. It was a long-standing tradition that PRC did not encourage uninvited guests.

  Justine pulled out her identification badge.

  “Captain Justine Turner, NASA,” she barked at the two guards holding flechette rifles and giving her stony looks. “I wish to enter; a friend of mine just passed through here, and it’s urgent I speak to him.”

  The one Oriental shook his head. “Sorry. No.”

  She thought about trying once more, then realized that if the Chinese were behind Alex’s kidnapping, there was no way she could wheedle or bluff her way into the PRC hall.

  “Very well. Good day.” Turning on her heel, she stalked off.

  *

  She was still worked up, and when she backtracked and found her meeting room, the NASA liaison immediately asked her what was wrong, detecting the flush in her cheeks and the quickening of her breath.

  “Are you all right?” There was a trace of an East Sussex accent in his voice.

  He was tall, English-born, with a thin mustache and a receding hairline. In England, they called him Duke Wexhall, but since his mother had been American, he held dual citizenship, and had used his American status to gain employ with the National Aeronautical Space Administration, a boyhood dream he told her when they first met.

  With his natural charm and approachable demeanor, Clive Wexhall waited patiently for Justine to explain why she was so upset.

  The internal debate whether to tell the liaison took a few moments. “Either I’m going crazy and seeing things or Alex Manez is being held here at Luna Station. I think the Chinese have him.” Succinctly, she gave him an account of the morning’s chase.

  Before she was through, Clive was EPSing a message to NASA. “It may be nothing, but I think we can’t be too thorough in our search. Holding him here would explain why Earth Space Traffic Commission has no trace of them yet. I also find it odd that you mention the Chinese.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Well, I didn’t want you to be alarmed, but ever since you landed, I haven’t been able to contact Sakami Chin for debriefing. The Chinese consulate refused to answer my calls as well. Washington will have to become involved if we don’t get any cooperation from the Chinese. If both sides start getting their back up on this…”

  He shrugged, leaving the obvious conclusion unspoken.

  “Shit,” Justine said after a moment.

  “Yeah,” he agreed.

  __________

  Quantum Resources, Inc. :
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br />   Toronto :

  Canada Corp.:

  Determining the specific gravity—or density—of a sample element on Earth is a relatively easy task; not so for an asteroid floating free in space, even a smaller one that has an estimated radius of 4.3 kilometers, such as the spherical one on the top of Calbert Loche’s list for the Quantum Resources team to re-evaluate.

  On Director Sanderson’s orders, the complete survey on SMD #1596 was to be repeated from scratch, no mistakes. It took sixteen hours for the astronautics team to arrive at the asteroid from the Canuck Flyer orbital.

  Work began immediately.

  Given that the specific gravity, or density, of an object is the ratio of the mass of a given volume compared to the mass of an equal volume of water at a temperature of either 4°C or 20°C, measured usually in x grams per cubic centimeter, the survey team first had to determine the volume of SMD #1596, using a laser topographer to determine surface area.

  With area a given, the mean radius could be inferred with the formula of 4πr2; in this case, the asteroid had a surface area of 231.2727 km3, and a mean radius of 4.29 km. The volume of a perfect sphere would have a formula of (πD3)/6, but with the imperfections of the surface, the craters formed through impacts with other asteroids and meteors, and any oblongs jutting from the surface, the scientists could determine the volume of SMD #1596 with an error factor of plus/minus one percent. SMD #1596 had a volume of 330.72002 km3 ±1%.

  Once volume was determined, they had to calculate mass. As there are no scales in outer space, another method had to be used.

  Given that one Newton of force acting on one kilogram of mass can change its velocity by one meter per second every second, as specified in Newton’s second law of motion, this was where the pilots with the space tugs came in. Using telemetry to study rotation and eccentricity of orbit, they also determined the asteroid’s velocity in orbit, which was 31,215 meters per second, similar to Earth’s, though it had a much longer distance to traverse around the sun to complete one orbit.