Cosmic Tales - Adventures in Sol System

by T. K. F. Weisskopf

  Louise Hofstatter was still in office and was immensely popular. Though not with Janie.

  She had been seven years old when they'd left Europa, and she'd prayed for Barkowski, had gone to bed every night thinking how it must be for him all by himself millions of miles from anyone else. She hadn't understood it then, hadn't been able to grasp why he'd stayed behind. That was probably because the search hadn't been successful, no life had been found, and it had seemed such a waste. But she knew now why he'd done it. The search was all that mattered. What you found or didn't find was beside the point. She prided herself thinking that, if she'd been there instead of Barkowski, she'd have done the same thing.

  Daddy led the way into the Martian exhibit, and they looked at the world flag and the excavation gear and Janie climbed onto the truck and sat in the front seat, pretending to drive. The sun was high overhead, pale and small, but the sky was dark anyhow, though not nearly like the sky at Pluto.

  "Hello, Janie." The voice startled her. It came out of the earphones, female this time. It sounded like Miss Harbison over at Roosevelt. "Welcome to Mars."

  "Thank you."

  "My name is Ginger, and I'm the base AI. Is there anything you'd like to know?"

  "How fast will this go? The truck?"

  "It's capable of speeds up to fifty-five miles per hour, although we wouldn't run it that fast."

  "Why not?"

  "We don't have roads. It would be dangerous."

  "What does it use for fuel?"

  "It uses batteries."

  She imagined herself bouncing over the uneven terrain. Vroom. Look out for that ditch. Cut hard on the wheel.

  Ginger explained how the base had functioned, showed her where the landers had been serviced, how fuel had been extracted from the ground, provided a simulated flight in an orbiting communication satellite. She'd raced above the red sands, chirping with joy, and thought how it must have been to lift away from Moonbase and ride the rockets out to Io and Titan. She laughed and begged Ginger for more.

  She was accustomed to the house AI and the school AI and the AI down at Schrodinger's. They were all wooden and serious and addressed you with tiresome formality. The one at school even yelled at you if you blocked the corridor while classes were changing. But Jerry had seemed more realistic, somehow. More like a person. And Ginger sounded vaguely as if she would have enjoyed a good party. "Were you actually there, Ginger?" she asked, pulling off the VR helmet. "Mars?"

  "No. I've never been out of the museum."

  "Oh." She shifted her position on the truck seat, which was too big for her.

  "I'm the same model, though."

  "Will you have a chance to go someday?"

  "To Mars?"

  "Yes."

  "Marsbase is shut down, Janie."

  "Well, yes, I mean, I knew that. But I meant, will you have a chance to travel on one of the missions?"

  "No. I don't think so."

  "I'm sorry."

  There was a tinkling sound like water tumbling over rocks. As if Ginger was having problems with a relay. Or reacting without words. "It's okay. I'm only a data processing system. I don't have emotions. No need to feel sorry for me."

  "You seem too alive to be just software."

  "I think that's a compliment. Thank you."

  "May I ask a question?"

  "Of course."

  "How old are you, Ginger?"

  "Fifteen years, eight months, four days. Why do you ask?"

  "I was just curious." And after a moment: "You're older than I am."

  "Yes. Does that matter?"

  "Are you aware that you're an AI?"

  "Ah, a philosophical young lady, I see. Must be top of the class."

  "I'm serious."

  "Wouldn't you rather just look at the rest of the base?"

  "No. Please. Are you aware who you are?"

  "Yes. Of course."

  "But you're not supposed to be, are you? I thought AIs were not conscious."

  "Well, who's to know? My instructions call for me to give the illusion of consciousness. But whoever knows for sure what's conscious and what isn't? Maybe that stairway over there is watching us."

  "You're kidding me."

  "Not entirely."

  It was hard to believe. But Janie thought about the AIs going out to the Oort Cloud, and the one headed for Alpha Centauri, who wouldn't get there for a thousand years.

  Riding alone.

  Like Hal Barkowski on Europa.

  She climbed down, making room for a pushy ten-year-old boy. Daddy told her she looked as if she'd have made a good astronaut. He said it as if she were only ten herself but she controlled her irritation. "Daddy," she said, "do they really not feel anything?"

  "Who is that, honey?"

  "The AIs."

  "That's correct. They're just machines."

  "Including Jerry and Ginger."

  "Yes. Just machines." He actually seemed to be enjoying the exhibit. He was looking around, shaking his head in awe. "Hard to believe we actually managed to send people to all those places. Quite an achievment."

  "Daddy, how do we know? That they're just machines?"

  "That's a tough one," he said. "We just do."

  "But how?"

  "Your friend Barkowski, for one reason. He says so. And he designed the first generation of sentient systems." He glanced at her. "In this case," he added, "sentient doesn't literally mean aware." He held up an index finger and spoke into his mike. When he'd finished he nodded. "Ginger tells me all the deep-space systems were designed by him."

  "That would include her," said Janie.

  He shrugged. "I suppose so."

  They went into the dome, which was pretty primitive. Plastic tables and chairs, a bank of monitors, some obsolete computer equipment, a half-dozen cots. Windows looked out over the reddish sand. She approached one and thought how the landscape never changed. Like Pluto. No lights anywhere. No movement. No rain. No flowers. Zip.

  Maybe Daddy was right. Maybe people should stay home.

  "You don't really believe that." Ginger's voice again. Different now. More intense. "Hold on to the dream, Janie. Interplanetary vehicles should have viewports and bases should have windows. And there should be somebody to look out the window. If we don't have that, we'll take the temperature of Neptune and not get much else."

  "That's a strange way for an AI to talk."

  "Whatever."

  "You can look, Ginger. You have sensors. You can probably see better than I can."

  "No. I can look, but I can't see. I can't describe what's out there. I can't penetrate things the way you do."

  Janie laughed, but she felt the hair rise on the back of her neck. "Are you sure you don't have any feelings?"

  "Absolutely." The voice was serene again.

  "And you think people should go? On the long flights?"

  "I think you should go."

  "Me?"

  "Somebody should go who can get out of the ship and look at the peaks on the moon and know what it means. Someone should throw a party on Io. Someone should capture her feelings in a poem that people will still be reading a thousand years from now."

  "Yeah," she said. "I'd love to do that."

  "Then do it."

  "But how? There's no program anymore. I can't ride on the ships they send out now."

  "How old are you, Janie?"

  "I'm thirteen."

  "A child."

  "I'm not a child."

  "It's okay. You won't always be so young."

  "I'm a teenager."

  "Your time will come. When it does, take hold of the hour. Make it count."

  * * *

  "The AI said you could go to Alpha Centauri?"

  "Not exactly, Daddy. She told me, when I got the chance, I should go."

  "Probably tells that to all the kids."

  "It seemed a strange thing to say."

  "It probably has a bug somewhere. Don't worry about it." They strode out through the
doors onto Constitution Avenue. It was damp and rainy, but the air smelled of approaching spring. "They ought to do something about the damned things. Get them fixed." Daddy flagged down a taxi and they climbed in. He gave Aunt Floss's address, where they were staying, and the vehicle slipped back into traffic. "Encouraging kids to do crazy stuff. It's probably Barkowski's programming. Man dumb enough to miss the last bus off Europa, what can you expect?"

  CLEANING LADY

  I was introduced to this author by Jim Baen, who bought his first novel, Warp Speed, out of the slush pile—er, from the backlog of unsolicited manuscripts. Based on that book, full of exuberant, old time SF feeling, and the fact of the author's multiple degrees, Jim decided that SF had gone long enough without a "Doc" in the house. Dr. Travis Taylor was given the nickname "Doc" by his students some years back. Like the legendary E.E. "Doc" Smith of Lensman fame, "Doc" Travis was ready to take his place in the pantheon of SF writers. The author assures me this story could take place within the next seventy-five years, sooner if the solar sails he is working on with NASA get funded. . . .

  Travis S. Taylor

  It really had been a good idea. I mean there are plenty of asteroids that are big enough to cause problems if they hit the Earth that pass by our orbit every three or four years. So it was a good idea for us to figure out ways to "clean up" the local neighborhood a little. I'm not a scientist or an engineer, I'm just your typical lady sailor, but I can tell you right out that we never considered the consequences of space terrorists!

  I had been driving solar sails for about ten years for one of the larger mining guilds when the eggheads came up with the idea of cleaning up the near-Earth objects (NEOs) that might one day cause a threat to Earth. It looked like fun work and a steady paycheck, which I needed, so I sent in my resume. I was more than qualified; after all, I have sailed more than six medium-sized asteroids from the far side of the asteroid belt to the mining station near Eros. You see, it's easy to radar and seismograph search the Belt for mineral-rich asteroids. The things are typically small enough that two or three good solar sailing tugs can pull them in to the mining facility in short order. The larger ones have to be brought in by bi-modal nuclear thermal and nuclear electric propulsion barges or mined on the spot, which is much more dangerous.

  Well, I was hauling in a small rock from the Earthside of the Belt to the mine when I got the call to come work for the "cleaning crew." I was more than happy to get into the government union and out of the commercial mining guild. Sailing about the Belt was fun, don't get me wrong, but it was more like treasure hunting than a career and until you find a big treasure you go hungry.

  As a "cleaning lady" I would be a civil servant and have all the benefits that go with that; I was looking forward to knowing I would get three squares a day again. So what was the new job? I would fly helmsman on a new one-hundred-kilometer-diameter hoop-supported solar sail ship made of the new super-lightweight carbon-carbon nanotube fiber mesh. The total spacecraft mass is only about three thousand kilograms. Wow!

  My job on this great new ship would be to fly in formation with two others and we'd go out to a matching orbit with a particular NEO as it came in on its perihelion or its closest approach to the sun. These Earth-crossing NEOs typically have perihelia at about one astronomical unit. In other words, they come into Earth's orbit twice on their way around the Sun. Occasionally they time this right and smack right into the Earth. That's what took care of the dinosaurs, most likely.

  I've been a "cleaning lady" for a little more than two years now and it has really been fun. The idea works great: we fly over and meet the NEO and the three formation-flying sailing ships spread out around it with a tether connecting all three. The tether is made of some new-fangled carbon-nanotube-spun fiber or some such damn thing. Like I said, I'm not a scientist, but I can tell you that the fiber tethers are the strongest rope ever put together by mankind. An engineer ex-boyfriend of mine told me that a piece of the tether the thickness of a human hair could hold up a nuke tug in one gravity, and those damn things weigh over twenty thousand kilograms! I since checked on it and he was right. Of course, that is the only thing that that sorry SOB didn't lie to me about. Anyway, sorry I get irked when I think about Johnny; he just up and left more than a year ago now and never called me back.

  After we catch the NEO with the tether net, we tug on the thing with the sailing ships as much as we can in order to alter its orbit. Here is the really cool part: we alter the orbit of the NEO just enough so that not only will it never hit the Earth, but it definitely will hit Mars in a few orbits. Each orbit of these NEOs is only about four or so years long so they end up at Mars pretty quickly. Why hit Mars? Why hit Mars!? Have you been living under a rock?!

  People have plenty of room on Earth right now, but in less than a hundred years at the rate we are growing there won't even be elbowroom! Mars is close and almost Earth-like. If we increase the temperature on Mars and add some dust to its atmosphere, in just a few decades, or maybe a century, it might be livable. Oh, we will still probably have to wear oxygen masks, but no need for pressure suits. Once the NASA boys and girls were through playing around on Mars and decided that there wasn't any life there that we could harm, it was decided to try our hand at terraforming. Of course the environmental wackos have been bitching about altering God's natural habitat ever since, but I don't hold stock in any of that.

  Actually, the real reason for the terraforming wasn't terraforming at all. That NEO that just missed the Moon about eight years ago really had scared the public enough to initiate the politicians into the new policy of "cleaning up the neighborhood." The eggheads came up with the idea to kill two birds with one stone. In fact, it makes sense that if the rock is taken out of space then it ain't likely to hit Earth now don't it?

  So that decision was made about twelve years ago and we had successfully removed seventeen asteroids and already crashed them into Mars. About ten other asteroids would be impacting Mars in a few short years and we were currently chasing many more and altering their orbits.

  I was coming off a two-month vacation Earthside and had to hook up with my sail tug crew as they caught up with the newest NEO acquisition at its perihelion near Earth. I would pack up tomorrow and then catch an Earth-to-orbit (ETO) hop up to the Elevator and from there I would take the Elevator up to geosynchronous earth orbit (GEO). At GEO my plans were to catch a lift with a nuke tug to match orbits with my sailcraft, the Boy's Life.

  But for now, I had one more day on the beach. Two months ago when I came into Cocoa Beach as soon as I got home, there was Johnny. We had argued and fought and I told him to get lost, but he just wouldn't leave. After about two weeks of his persistence I gave in and he had been with me ever since. I expected that he would leave me again just like he had the year before, but Johnny is cute, good in the sack, and besides I'm going back to spacing for another year or so anyway. I deserve a pleasurable fling every now and then, right?

  The last night Johnny and I were lying beside each other on the beach looking up at the night sky. The Elevator was particularly bright.

  "Isn't that beautiful, Tamara?" He pointed up at the Elevator and stroked my hair with his other hand.

  "Sure it is, John-boy. But you should see it from up there. The view is much better," I told him.

  "Well, I just might. I wasn't going to tell you until tomorrow but . . . I signed on with a nuke tug crew."

  "Really?" Johnny had never been a spacer; in fact he was more of an environmentalist. "I would have never expected that."

  "This way I thought I might get closer to you somehow." He smiled and batted his eyes at me. I kind of giggled.

  "Johnny, once I get on the Boy's Life I will be there for the better part of a year. Orbital mechanics just doesn't allow any diverging from that schedule. I don't see how you will get any closer to me. In fact, you will probably be much further away." I told him that perhaps he could get out of flying on a nuke tug if he explained he had no clue of how such th
ings worked.

  "Oh, I realize that. I am an engineer, you know," he stated. "I meant closer metaphorically. Besides, it will be different and fun and I'm looking forward to seeing you off tomorrow. My tug is the one that you're taking to your solar sail." He smiled again.

  Our last night on Earth was a good one.

  The next morning I showered and shaved and clipped my hair down to regulation. Johnny and I dressed and then made our way over to the Cape. We both processed through customs and met our respective organization representatives to punch in our start time and then we boarded the ETO rocket. I never will get used to the ETO hops. The three gravities are pretty rough and the fear of one of those millions of moving parts seizing up and no longer moving scares the hell out of me. The outcome of one of those parts stopping while extremely hot volatiles are flowing through them doesn't sound appealing to me. But we made it safely to the Space Elevator just above low earth orbit (LEO).

  The Elevator is really just a huge solid and rigid tether with compartments attached to it. Elevator cars ride up and down the tether causing a momentum transfer to and from the tether. Since the cars weigh much less than the rigid tether, the tether's orbit is only lowered a few meters while the Elevator car's orbit rises many thousands of kilometers. Johnny explained to me that there was something about conservation of momentum involved here. I understood how the damned thing worked but I guess Johnny felt more like a smart engineer getting to explain it to me. I just kept my mouth shut and acted the dumb blonde.

  At the top of the Elevator we hopped Johnny's nuke tug, the Prometheus, and pressed onward for the Boy's Life. I pointed out the view of Earth to Johnny and he watched out the portal the whole trip—well, except for when he was throwing up. The high—gravity, microgravity, and low-gravity mix of our trip had really taken a toll on him. I kind of felt sorry for him. But by the time we were approaching my sail a week later, he had acclimated himself to the environment pretty well.

  Johnny and I kissed and said our goodbyes and then went our separate ways. Or so I had thought. By the time I embarked and ingressed to the command cabin of the Boy's Life, the Prometheus had come about and passed close enough to one of the tethers holding the sail formation and the NEO to burn through it with its ion propulsion system's plasma exhaust. Captain Billy was hailing the Prometheus and not being very successful at it. After a moment or two of confusion, Billy finally got through and a video image from the bridge of the nuke ship came through. It was Johnny's face on the screen!